Finance Analyst – Accounts Receivable Argos

Location: London, Coventry or Manchester Store Support Centre & Home – colleagues go into the office 1-2 days per week on average.

About the team

The Finance Operations team helps protect cash flow by ensuring third-party billing is accurate, collections are effective and debtor balances are supported by reliable controls. Working with operational teams, Accenture, technology colleagues and external collection agencies, the team provides visibility of performance and resolves issues that could delay cash collection. This is an opportunity to improve an important end-to-end Finance process and help the business collect the value it is owed.

More about the role

As Finance Analyst – Accounts Receivable, you will oversee billing and cash-collection performance, monitoring service delivery from Accenture and ensuring billing requests meet agreed accuracy and compliance standards. You will review routine billing and debt queries, resolve escalated issues and work with third-party collection agencies to support on-time collections.

Day to day, you will review and approve balance-sheet reconciliations, complete control self-assessments and assess supporting evidence. You will report on volumes, aged items, reconciliation performance, control exceptions and key risks, explaining the story behind the data. You will also support period-end journals and analysis, help develop offshore delivery, improve processes and partner technology teams on system changes affecting Accounts Receivable.

More about you

You will bring practical knowledge of debt collection, financial controls and balance-sheet reconciliations, with the numerical capability to work accurately across high-volume transactional information. You will be able to use Excel to analyse financial and operational data and present clear conclusions to Finance, operational and delivery-partner stakeholders.

You will communicate effectively, follow issues through to resolution and look for ways to make processes simpler, more efficient and better controlled. You will be studying towards ACA, ACCA or CIMA, or be able to demonstrate equivalent relevant Finance knowledge and experience. Experience in retail, Finance Operations, transactional Finance or Order to Cash would be useful but is not essential.

Essential criteria

• Active study towards ACA, ACCA or CIMA, or equivalent demonstrable Finance knowledge and experience.
• Demonstrable experience of debt collection, Accounts Receivable or Order to Cash activity, including resolving billing or debtor queries.
• Evidence of preparing or reviewing balance-sheet reconciliations and maintaining financial controls or control evidence.
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Excel, including experience of analysing high-volume transactional data and presenting financial or operational information.
• Proven ability to monitor service delivery or process performance, identify exceptions and coordinate stakeholders to resolve issues within agreed timescales.

#LI-SA1

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you here at Sainsbury’s. For a FTSE business, we move incredibly fast. When we’re not leading projects, we’re supporting teams across the wider group to achieve their goals. And here, you can see the impact of your work as soon as you walk into a store, giving you a real sense of purpose and responsibility. Better still, the team around you will listen to your ideas and opinions, and you’ll have every chance to try something new. The scale and complexity of our business mean there’s always something new to learn, and we’ll support you every step of the way. We’re trusted to get on with it. So get ready to make things happen.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 10% of salary, depending on how we perform.

Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme.

Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).