Finance Assistant in Huntingdon

This role is part of the Council's Corporate Parenting and Fostering Finance Team, and you'll be joining a friendly and supportive team who are passionate about ensuring that Carers, Providers and Young People receive accurate and timely financial support. Our work plays a vital role in supporting some of the most vulnerable children and young people across Cambridgeshire, ensuring payments are processed efficiently and financial processes are delivered to a high standard.

We are looking for two full-time Finance Assistants (37 hours per week) to join our team. You will play a key role in processing a wide range of financial transactions, supporting payment arrangements, and providing excellent customer service to carers, providers, young people, colleagues and stakeholders.

The role involves maintaining and updating financial and payment information across our systems, including ERP, ContrOCC and associated interfaces, ensuring all records are accurate and processed in a timely manner. You will also support customers with invoice and payment queries, complete financial assessments and means-testing calculations, administer Direct Payments, and contribute to effective debt management processes and budget monitoring support.

Alongside this, you will be involved in regular payment runs, monitoring shared mailboxes, and responding to supplier and stakeholder enquiries. As part of a collaborative team, you will work across both the Corporate Parenting and Fostering finance functions, helping to deliver an efficient, responsive and customer-focused service.

We are passionate about delivering an excellent service and strive to ensure every interaction is professional, supportive and solution-focused. In return, you will be part of a welcoming team environment where your contribution is valued, and you will have the opportunity to develop your knowledge and experience within a rewarding area of finance. The role includes regular office-based working on agreed days to support teamwork, collaboration and continuous service improvement.

What will you be doing?

You will work closely with carers, providers, young people, social care colleagues, external organisations and finance colleagues across the Council, helping to ensure that financial support is delivered accurately, efficiently and on time. As part of a collaborative Corporate Parenting and Fostering Finance Team, you will play an important role in supporting the financial processes that underpin services for children, young people and carers.

• Processing a wide range of financial transactions, ensuring payments to carers, providers and young people are accurately recorded and paid on time.
• Setting up and maintaining supplier, carer and young person records across ERP, ContrOCC and associated systems, ensuring payment and banking information is accurate and up to date.
• Recording and monitoring financial information across multiple systems and SharePoint directories, maintaining high standards of accuracy, consistency and data security.
• Supporting the invoicing process by recording contributions from other local authorities and generating accurate invoices and charging correspondence in line with agreed procedures.
• Providing excellent customer service by responding to enquiries via email and telephone, resolving payment, invoicing and financial assessment queries in a professional and customer-focused manner.
• Investigating and resolving financial issues, including payment discrepancies, debt-related matters and customer concerns, escalating more complex cases where appropriate.
• Completing financial assessments and means-testing calculations for prospective and existing carers, ensuring assessments and annual reviews are completed in accordance with policy and within required timescales.
• Maintaining trackers, shared mailboxes and financial records to support effective monitoring, reporting, audit requirements and the prevention of overpayments.
• Supporting Direct Payment processes by ensuring all required documentation is received, recorded and stored securely, providing a clear and accurate audit trail.
• Assisting with budget monitoring and providing financial support and information to managers and budget holders as required.
• Producing financial information and statistics to support operational and management reporting.
• Handling sensitive information relating to children, young people and carers in accordance with GDPR requirements and Council policies.
• Working collaboratively across both the Corporate Parenting and Fostering Finance functions, sharing knowledge and supporting colleagues to meet service priorities and maintain resilience within the team.
• Contributing positively to service improvements and adapting to new systems, processes and ways of working as the service continues to evolve.

About you

You should have strong administrative and financial processing skills, with excellent attention to detail and the ability to manage a varied workload effectively. A good understanding of financial processes and systems, along with the ability to accurately record, analyse and maintain financial information, will be essential to success in this role.

You'll need excellent communication and customer service skills, as you will be liaising with a wide range of customers and stakeholders including carers, providers, social care colleagues, other local authorities and external organisations. You will be confident in handling sensitive conversations, resolving queries professionally and building positive working relationships.

We are looking for someone who can work on their own initiative, remain calm under pressure and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment. You should be organised, methodical and adaptable, with the ability to prioritise competing demands while maintaining a high level of accuracy.

As part of a collaborative finance service, you will be expected to work in an agile and flexible way across both the Corporate Parenting and Fostering Finance teams, supporting colleagues and responding to changing service priorities. A willingness to share knowledge, contribute to continuous improvement and embrace new ways of working will be key.

You will need a good working knowledge of Microsoft Office applications, particularly Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Excel, and be comfortable working across multiple systems and databases. Experience of financial systems would be beneficial, although full training will be provided.

Most importantly, we're looking for someone who is keen to learn, develop and make a positive contribution to our team. Don't worry if you can't yet demonstrate every aspect of the role — a positive attitude, willingness to learn and commitment to delivering excellent customer service are just as important. We will provide full training, support and development opportunities to help you succeed.

Our benefits

We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage:

• A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family.
• Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro-rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme.
• Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances.
• Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings.
• Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth.
• Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day.
• Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network.
• Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards.
• An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in-store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes.

Take a look at our Employment Benefits Brochure attached to this advert to find out more.

About us

Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes.

Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do. We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self-organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Through a Guaranteed Interview Scheme, we will offer an interview to all applicants who disclose a disability and meet the essential criteria for a job vacancy. On your application form you can indicate you are disabled. Some examples of reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch.

Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion.