Finance Assistant in Birmingham

Opportunity: The charity Generation, which supports people facing barriers to employment into life-changing work, is looking for a new Finance Assistant.

Location: Remote - based in the UK (optional Hybrid including attending a Generation office in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds or Glasgow). We offer flexibility to employees to balance their commitments, including medical appointments, parental or caregiving responsibilities, and personal goals.

Salary: £28,000–£34,000 per annum (FTE), depending on experience and skills. Salary will be pro rata based on working hours.

Contract: Part-time: 3-4 days per week.

Informal enquiries for this position can be sent to andy.smith@generation.org.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As the Finance Assistant you will play a key role in ensuring the smooth running of our day-to-day finance operations. This work is crucial in ensuring our bills and staff are paid on time and our financial systems are an accurate log of how we have spent our funds including from our donors and funders. In short, this role is crucial for our overall delivery of impact and work across the UK and Ireland.

Working closely with and managed by our Senior Funding Manager within our Growth, Data and Operations Team, you will take ownership of accounts receivable and payable processes, manage expenses and bookkeeping, and support monthly and year-end reporting. You will also provide first-line responses to finance queries and help maintain clear and accurate financial records across our systems. You will also work closely with our outsourced financial management company (who create our management accounts) and play a role in our annual audits. Your work will span our operations in the UK and Ireland - technically two separate legal entities with separate bank accounts and payrolls, but that work day to day as one team.

ABOUT GENERATION

Generation is a charity with the vision of a meaningful career for every person. Our aim is to support people facing significant and multiple barriers to employment into life-changing careers they otherwise could not access. We achieve this with a unique methodology of profession-specific skills bootcamp training, focussed on in-demand careers (specifically in the tech, healthcare and green sectors), with extensive, ongoing pastoral support and matchmaking to employer partners. Generation launched globally in 2015, and has grown quickly to become the world’s largest demand-led employment initiative. We have placed over 100,000 people into roles, working with over 4,000 employer partners to date across 16 countries and 26 professions. Since launching in the UK in 2019, we have now trained more than 3,500 people. Our work focuses on supporting those from diverse groups facing barriers to desirable employment. For these learners, we have achieved an industry leading c. 70% job placement rate with learners now placed at over 800 employers. We have secured transformative corporate funding from Microsoft, the JP Morgan Charitable Foundation, the Macquarie Group Foundation, Barclays, Blackrock, and many more. We are also the leading charity delivering under contracts from the Department for Education’s Skills Bootcamp strand. This has driven our scale to new programmes, regions and beneficiary groups. By joining Generation UK&I, you will become part of an organisation committed to social impact and determined to play its part in changing the system in this context. The work is fast-paced, exciting, and innovative.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Accounts Receivable: Raise, post, and chase funder and partner invoices. Ensure income is recorded accurately and in line with agreed funding or project allocations, for example tagged to specific costs.
• Accounts Payable: Review and check supplier invoices for accuracy and ensure they are tagged to the correct cost types. Manage payment runs ensuring timely and compliant payments of our invoices.
• Expenses: Manage the employee expense process, including use of and processing data from software tools such as Expensify and Soldo. Brief and support staff on expense procedures and compliance requirements.
• Bookkeeping: Tag all transactions in our systems against the correct cost centre, budget line, and funder following and maintain a clear, consistent cost mapping document. Ensure accurate tagging of funders to cost centres/cohorts and programmes.
• Payroll: Support the upload of payroll to the bank for payment to staff and tax authorities. Ensure payroll records are accurate and aligned with HR data.
• Audit and Tax: Support the preparation of documents for annual audit and tax returns. Maintain audit-ready records throughout the year.
• Month-End Inputs and Reviews: Prepare monthly inputs, such as staff lists and cost allocation percentage and assumptions (including via our virtual timesheet). Conduct a first review and update of the monthly cashflow model for accuracy.
• Analysis and Ad Hoc Support: Handle first-pass responses to finance queries from teams across the organisation before escalation to external accountants or managers.

ABOUT YOU

Here are the core attributes we think you’ll need in the role:

• You’re a highly organised professional, able to manage multiple workstreams, priorities and to-dos following clear processes.
• You’re detail-oriented, with a focus on accuracy and detail.
• You’re comfortable with numbers analysing and comparing data sources for precision and alignment.
• You’re collaborative and communicative, with a willingness to share and work through problems.
• You’re conscientious, careful with who and when you share potentially sensitive financial information.

You may also thrive even more in this role if you’re passionate about the cause - interested and motivated to work for an organisation supporting those from a disadvantaged background into life-changing outcomes.

EXPERIENCE

To succeed, we think you’ll need experience of:

• Managing organisational bookkeeping including accounts receivable and payable processes.
• Managing payment runs and payroll in an organisational bank account.
• Using financial management tools such as Sage Intacct (or similar).
• Using Excel/Google Sheets for analysis and data handling.

Beyond this it would be desirable, but not required, for you to have experience of:

• These activities in a charitable context with multiple restricted and unrestricted funding streams.
• Exposure to month-end processes (including cashflow forecasts and management accounts).
• Exposure to and use of expense management tools like Expensify, Soldo.

If you meet some but not all of these requirements please reach out.

A fair chance: Every role at Generation is open to applications from all sections of society. We believe in the potential of everyone; regardless of race, religion or belief, ethnic origin, different physical ability, family structure, socio-economics, age, nationality or citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other aspect that makes you, well, you. We believe that the more diverse we are the better we become. More than just encouraging your application, we’re committed to conscious inclusion that cultivates an ethos of belonging, connection and shared purpose. We go further together. It’s this philosophy that drives us towards our mission. We open our doors to those who share this mindset. We are particularly interested in hearing from candidates from marginalised groups. We will assess applications on a rolling basis and close this posting as soon as we have found the right candidate. We look forward to hearing from you.