Audit Senior in Crawley

Location: Hybrid / Crawley, UK

Job type: Permanent / Full-time

Sector and subsector: Accounting & Finance | Audit & Practice

Salary: Negotiable salary

Hours: Full time Mon-Fri 9am-5.30pm (37.5 hours per week)

Affinia is the UK’s largest purpose-led, purpose-built Accountancy firm, focused on building stronger, more valuable relationships. With over 1000 colleagues across the East, Southeast, London and the Midlands, we are dedicated to supporting our clients, colleagues and communities. We advise businesses, public sector organisations, charities and individuals throughout the UK and internationally across six Service Lines - Accountancy & Advisory, Tax and Planning, Audit & Assurance, Corporate Finance, Payroll and Corporate Recovery.

Our team also offers in-depth sector expertise across a number of sectors, ensuring our clients receive the best short to medium and long-term advice, tailored to them. We are committed to delivering excellence in every aspect of our work, adapting to the evolving technology and regulatory landscape while consistently exceeding client expectations. Our people are our most valuable asset. We are therefore committed to supporting our colleagues throughout their professional development, providing guidance and training at whatever stage of their career they join us.

Purpose of the role

As an Audit Senior, you will contribute regularly, supporting your assistant managers and managers with their portfolios, and contributing more to meetings with clients. You will start to mentor those junior to you and monitor their work to ensure quality outputs. Using your knowledge and experience, you will have a more initiative‑taking mindset when it comes to collaborating with your team and your clients, e.g. recognising and flagging where efficiencies can be created or process improvements can be made. You will have more client exposure more frequently, to model best‑in‑class client service principles. In this role, the emphasis is less on learning and more on ownership, contributing, and starting to manage. If you are on the path to being fully qualified, then during this role you will likely finalise your studies. Affinia can provide ongoing training to develop your ‘soft’ skills, such as how to be a mentor to others, provide constructive feedback, and an introduction to line management. We provide access to Tolley’s, Mercia and Croner‑I for CPD, and LinkedIn Learning for everyone. Working with your line manager you will craft a development plan that is bespoke to you and your goals.

Accountabilities

• Acting as the lead senior on audits, reporting to the audit manager.
• Being the first point of contact for the client whilst on‑site and ensuring any queries are dealt with promptly even after the fieldwork has ended.
• Responsibility for developing and finalising the audit plan, identifying key audit risks based on the background knowledge, thorough research, preliminary results and discussions with the client, and ensuring appropriate work is planned to address these.
• Setting and monitoring of budgets, undertaking execution of the fieldwork, drafting the financial statements, letter of representation and audit findings reports and assisting the manager and RI to prepare for the closing meeting.
• Lead fieldwork teams on larger or higher risk audit clients.
• Discuss/agree any potential audit journals with the client during fieldwork.
• Raise any potential time overruns with the manager as soon as they are identified.
• Be responsible for clearing review points and addressing any follow up queries until the date the audit report is signed.
• Ensure quality of financial statement disclosures by reference to the applicable checklist.
• Identify any areas of weakness in the client’s system & controls and making reasonable recommendations for improvements.
• Keep the manager informed of any issues that arise with the client, e.g. copying them into all emails.
• Maintain and develop technical ability by attending webinars and keeping abreast of technical development.
• Review audit working papers of junior members of the team during fieldwork and provide support for them to achieve their goals.

Skills / Qualifications

• Key characteristics include strong diligence, problem solving and communication skills, a professional approach to clients and colleagues and a firm commitment to providing top quality client services.
• Recent experience in Audit and Assurance within an accountancy practice.
• Qualified or almost qualified status (we will provide access to the required professional training including exams if relevant).
• Interested in collaborating with people, able to build relationships and networks.
• Experience of leading external audit assignments from planning to completion stages under International Standards on Auditing.
• Experience of preparing accounts in accordance with UK GAAP.
• Able to work independently as well as part of a team.
• Effective communication skills with senior staff and clients.
• Confident user of Microsoft Office suite – Intermediate/Advanced user of Word and Excel.
• Sound knowledge of key risks applicable to specific audits and aware of own limitations and when to ask for assistance.
• Excellent organisational and time management.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a team environment.

Core Benefits

• Full study support and paid time off for study / exams.
• Professional membership support.
• Paycare – claim money back for Dental / Optical / Professional Therapies.
• Dress for your Diary Policy.

Affinia is committed to being an Equal Opportunity Employer. Our policy is unequivocal: we do not tolerate discrimination based on age, disability, sex, race, religion, or belief, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, or sexual orientation. We pride ourselves on being an inclusive organisation that actively promotes equality of opportunity for all, valuing the right mix of talent, skills, and potential. We welcome applications from a diverse range of candidates, and selection for roles is based solely on individual merit.