SAP S/4HANA Finance Group Reporting Lead

Location: Home-based, with travel to client sites as required.

Security & Eligibility: Due to security clearance requirements, the successful candidate must be a British national and eligible to obtain UK Security Clearance (SC). This requires continuous UK residency for the last five (5) years, with no periods spent abroad exceeding three (3) months at a time.

Role Overview: An experienced SAP S/4HANA Finance Group Reporting Lead is required to take functional ownership of statutory and management consolidation processes within large-scale SAP S/4HANA programmes. The role is responsible for the end-to-end design and delivery of General Ledger, parallel ledgers, consolidation, and SAP Group Reporting. This includes defining harmonised chart of accounts structures, implementing intercompany reconciliation and elimination rules, and establishing parallel accounting frameworks to support IFRS, GAAP, and local statutory requirements. The position involves close collaboration with CFOs, Group Controllers, statutory reporting teams, auditors, and other senior finance stakeholders to ensure regulatory compliance and to deliver an integrated, auditable global financial reporting platform.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead design workshops with CFOs, Group Controllers, and Finance stakeholders to capture statutory, management, and regulatory reporting requirements.
• Define and deliver a global chart of accounts and ledger architecture, ensuring consistency across legal entities and geographies.
• Design and configure parallel ledgers to support IFRS, GAAP, and local statutory accounting requirements.
• Implement SAP S/4HANA Group Reporting, including ownership models, consolidation methods, and intercompany eliminations.
• Establish and test processes for foreign currency translation, minority interest, and consolidation of investments.
• Act as design authority across GL and consolidation workstreams, ensuring solution quality, compliance, and audit readiness.
• Oversee functional specifications for WRICEF objects related to reporting, interfaces, and reconciliations.
• Manage data migration activities for GL balances, open items, and consolidation structures from legacy systems.
• Plan and execute a minimum of two full mock financial close cycles prior to go-live, ensuring accurate trial balance reconciliation and elimination results.
• Ensure end-to-end integration with Treasury (cash positions and intercompany loans), Tax (deferred tax and statutory reporting), and SAP Analytics Cloud (planning and analytics).
• Provide assurance that consolidated outputs align with statutory requirements and are complete, accurate, and auditable.
• Mentor consultants, review key deliverables, and contribute to programme governance and assurance documentation.

Required Experience & Expertise:

• Demonstrable track record delivering SAP S/4HANA Finance programmes with a strong focus on Group Reporting and consolidation.
• Deep expertise in General Ledger, parallel ledgers, consolidation logic, and statutory reporting processes.
• Strong understanding of IFRS, GAAP, and multi-GAAP reporting requirements.
• Practical experience with intercompany accounting, eliminations, and automated reconciliation processes.
• Proven experience planning and executing financial close rehearsals and resolving complex reconciliation issues.
• Awareness of SAP Central Finance and its interaction with Group Reporting is desirable.
• Strong understanding of integration points with Treasury, Tax, and Analytics solutions.
• Proven ability to engage confidently with CFOs, auditors, and regulatory bodies.

Tools & Methodologies:

• SAP S/4HANA Finance, SAP Group Reporting, and SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC).
• SAP Activate methodology and agile delivery frameworks.
• JIRA, Confluence, Signavio, and SAP Solution Manager / ChaRM for governance and change control.
• Tricentis Tosca / qTest or HP ALM for testing and defect management.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Information Technology, or a related discipline.
• SAP certification in Financial Accounting and/or Group Reporting (highly desirable).

Stakeholder & Soft Skills:

• Excellent communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills at senior executive level.
• Strong ability to translate statutory and regulatory requirements into robust SAP design decisions.
• Highly analytical, with a structured and methodical problem-solving approach.
• Comfortable operating in multi-country, highly regulated environments.
• Demonstrated leadership capability, including mentoring consultants and guiding cross-functional workstream teams.