Finance Co-ordinator

Finance Co-ordinator**Advert Reference Number**:386**Job Location**:Milton Keynes**Department**:Accounting Services**Salary**:£31,387 to £36,924**Closing Date**:21 November 2024**Weekly Working Hours**:37**Contract Type**:Fixed Term Contract**Fixed Term Contract: End Date**:31 August 2025**Welsh Language Standard**:Not Applicable
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**About the Role**

This is a varied role within a busy team who provides high quality financial services within the Finance Core Support / Shared Service function of the Business Partnering team, at The Open University.

The role supports collation of financial information for external and internal reporting, as well as projects. It assists with the preparation and organisation of relevant data, allocating to the correct reports, and coordinating submissions to the relevant external or internal stakeholders when complete.

Part of the focus for this role is around running reports (using various systems) and ensuring the smooth delivery of support to units, faculties, and BP Hubs (services include managing and answering queries, triaging, and responding to ad-hoc requests). This includes running and distributing routine financial reports to other Finance colleagues, running reports on fee income, tuition, staff cost forecasting and projects, as well as the preparation and compilation of financial analysis and tables for external returns and documentation.

The role can also support the general routine maintenance of University’s unit / faculty projects (including research, commercial, and donations), adhering to the correct process and required regulation, reporting to key stakeholders, and providing support to audit where needed. This includes financial monitoring and reporting on externally funded projects budgets, forecasting, providing costings and financial monitoring, in compliance with both the University’s financial regulations and procedures, contracts, and the terms and conditions of the funders of the projects.

**Key Responsibilities**
- Processing finance workflow for staffing changes when required
- Completing SCF (Salary Cost Forecast) maintenance (informing rates, inflation etc.), updating / amendments to records in SCF and other systems.
- Support external and year-end reporting and collation of information including TRAC, HEBCIS, HESA, REF, TEF, KEF, plus Middle States accreditation
- Working with project leads or managers completing SAP WBS project and donation set up, monitoring, maintenance (budgeting and forecasting), and closure
- Raising or reviewing sales orders/invoices including producing the supporting financial MI as required.
- Keeping up to date with funder and contractual terms and conditions as needed
- Documenting, updating and adopting financial processes, principles, and approaches ensuring best practice, consistency and continuous improvement
- Ensuring familiarization with latest process and systems guidance, relevant policies, procedures and university financial regulations as necessary and supporting and advising colleagues when required ensuring compliance (internal and external)
- Line management of Core Support Assistant as required
- Providing flexible cover across the BP Core Support Teams as required.
- Training and development of University staff in finance process and systems as appropriate ensuring consistency.
- Liaising with specialist finance support teams
- Completing other such other duties as may be allocated from time to time both within the team and in providing cover in other areas within the division if required.

**Skills and Experience**
- Recent, relevant experience of working in an accounting environment, ideally within management accounts or business partnering function.
- Experience of costing / budgeting / forecasting.
- Sound knowledge of MS Excel (creating tables and charts, using financial Excel functions such as formulas and pivot tables, managing / manipulating large data sets.
- Experience of adhering to accounting conventions, financial regulations, and procedures.
- Experience of preparing / involvement in audits.
- Practical experience of managing others and training / coaching when needed.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills, with the ability to deal confidently with a range of people at all levels.
- Taking personal responsibility for getting things done, managing a wide variety of tasks; ability to plan, prioritise and managing own workloads.
- Experience of meeting critical deadlines and working under pressure.
- Ability to take ownership of a problem and resolve it, having taken full account of the facts.
- Can demonstrate how they successfully maintain attention to detail.
- Able to demonstrate strong team working and adding value to the team.
- Ability to build and maintain good working relationships within the team and the key stakeholders.
- Ability to take a balanced approach to hybrid working, both in person and virtually, using varied communication channels as appropriate