Location Accountant- Nec - Birmingham

As Location Accountant, you will business partner the venues General Manager and their Heads of Department, responsible for the financial support of the largest individual contract in the region. You will perform a high-profile role, developing skills in working collaboratively with the client, and internally across functions and other stakeholders. Through effective business partnering, the role will continually improve service levels, cost effectiveness and add value to commercial activities undertaken.

PURPOSE: Commercial Support Responsibilities

• Business partnering with the GM and HOD's ensuring strong commercial and operational decision making, managing financial risks and opportunities.
• Delivering pro-active financial analysis with summarised findings and recommendations to support decision making.
• Take responsibility for the financial controls and processes for the venue, which includes raising invoices, cash reporting, credit card reconciliation, reviewing the PO Log, event ETA's, monthly R&A process, weekly flash process and budget process.

Performance

• Deliver analysis of key business reporting such as dashboards, month end reports, business reviews, client reports, budgets, flash forecasts and other ad-hoc analysis to be discussed at monthly/weekly reviews.
• Challenging operational teams and where there is a risk to achievement, highlighting to GM and FBP.
• Key metrics include GP%, Labour to Sales ratio and unit margin %.
• Assist in training of operational teams in the use of business reporting and KPIs to understand and improve their financial performance.
• Populating monthly balance sheet document for review, escalating key risks and opportunities to GM & FBP.
• Be responsible along with the GM for the overseeing of the budgeting and forecasting process for the venue.
• Attend client finance meetings when required - reporting on their client return and dealing with any issues within the contract.
• Be a part of future planning and strategic decision-making process.

People: Relationship Management

• Working effectively as part of a team—both within finance and as part of the operational team.
• Building relationships with key finance stakeholders.
• Support the learning of finance apprentices within the team and share knowledge/best practice.
• Experience of business partnering non-finance professionals to support the delivery of sound financial information.
• Part-qualified Accountant (CIMA/ACCA/ACA) preferred.
• Experience of management accounting inclusive of accounting adjustments, producing reports/analysis to support commercial decision making.
• Analytical and with a high level of attention to detail.

Accountability & Resilience

• There are a lot of competing requirements—you need to be able to balance time and achieve tight deadlines.
• Commercially astute and quick to work through the many deadlines required back-to-back through the year.
• Attention to detail - ensuring the results and analysis presented is accurate and meaningful.
• Ability to adapt to changing environments & circumstances.

Relationship Building

• Able to build relationships with stakeholders (in Compass and with clients, Ops and Finance) in the right way—to be able to engage, interact and challenge in a way that gets the right outcome for the business.
• An effective communicator with the ability to communicate oral and written information concisely and logically at all levels—to both finance and non-finance people.
• Presenting detailed information in a succinct and clear way—often to non-finance people.
• Know the detail. Be data numerate and comfortable working with data to make data-driven decisions; we have moved to data warehouses and dashboards as the way to drive the business.
• The individual must be comfortable with this.
• Understand the core drivers/issues and present in a way that is succinct and appropriate for the audience.
• Assess opportunities.

Desirable

• Experience of SAP and E15 / Power BI as analysis and reporting tools.

As part of Compass you'll help to feed people, fuel progress and forge connections in around 6,000 venues. Join us to grow your career with the industry leader, and get competitive pay, great perks and unrivalled opportunities for learning and development, at one of the UK's biggest businesses.

Compass Group UK&I is committed to fostering an environment where every individual can truly be themselves at work and has equal opportunities to advance in their careers. We strive to build a culture that respects and celebrates the unique talents, beliefs, backgrounds, and abilities of all our team members. We want our colleagues to feel valued, empowered to reach their full potential, and to thrive - because diversity is our strength!