Finance Assistant - Debt Collection - 12-month Maternity Cover in Colchester

Fixed Term Contract, Full Time

£25,081 per annum

Location: Chelmsford

Closing Date: Monday 2nd March 2026 at 11.59pm

Please note that this is a Fixed Term contract / Secondment opportunity for a period of 12 months to cover maternity leave. This is a credit control and not an accountancy focused role. Customer interaction by phone / email is the primary function so good communication skills are essential. This position is an Anywhere Worker role with the expectation the successful worker will attend County Hall, Chelmsford one day per week, with the set team day being a Tuesday.

The Opportunity:

• Purchase to Pay (P2P) and Income aims to provide a comprehensive financial transactional and support service, maximising new and innovative technology to provide excellent customer service using a multi skilled workforce.
• Working within Income Collection in order to maximise the income generated for Services in Adult Social Care at Essex County Council, alongside ensuring effective recovery of aged debt.
• Finance Assistants will work with customers to ensure that their invoices for Adult Social Care services are paid promptly with a view to arranging automated future payments including direct debits.
• Experienced in working as a team member across a flexible and multi skilled workforce, delivering excellent customer service.
• You will need to manage and respond to customer queries to seek resolution.
• Knowledge of Income Collection processes is desirable but not essential as full training will be provided.

The role requires good interpersonal and communication skills to deliver excellent customer service.

Accountabilities:

• Ensure effective recovery of Adult Social Care Income.
• Work towards effectively building key stakeholder relationships and effectively managing conversations in order to resolve debt issues.
• Contribute towards delivery of Key KPI's in delivering the above requirements in an effective, compassionate, and compliant manner.
• Effective in managing queries and disputes in order to ensure effective resolutions.
• Negotiating payments and promoting automated processes to service users, in order to reduce the likelihood of repeated debts.
• Contributes to the delivery of the business plan for financial transactions, in support of the wider organisational vision.
• Responsible for processing and managing financial transactions, following defined business processes, inputting, and interpreting data to ensure quality, consistency, accuracy, timeliness, and high performance.
• Responsible for delivering all activities to meet defined deadlines, proactively reporting any risks or issues for early resolution.
• Provides support and guidance to internal and external customers in a professional manner, in line with financial processes, ensuring that policy and legislation are met.
• Carries out basic reporting, which contributes to the management of organisational performance, maximises income and ensures compliance with Financial Regulations and ECC Policies.
• Work flexibly and collaboratively across P2P and Income to deliver finance support.
• Recommend process improvements and redesign to achieve best practice and organisational efficiency.
• Contributes to maintaining currency on legislation changes and translating these into local policy and procedure, to identify and review potential changes in technology.
• Specific individual and shared targets and objectives are defined annually within the performance management framework.

The Experience You Will Bring:

• Essential: Excellent Communication and Interpersonal skills are essential as well as an ability to build and establish relationships. A good telephone manner is needed along with a firm, fair and friendly approach. Ability to deliver effective, administrative duties; well organised, reliable, and able to meet deadlines, whilst appropriately handling confidential and sensitive information. Level of good competency using Microsoft office packages including, Outlook, Word, and Excel.
• Desirable: Credit Control/Debt Collection experience. Some knowledge of P2P/Income systems and demonstrable accounts payable, accounts receivable, purchase to pay and e-invoicing experience would be desirable. Negotiation Skills.