Household Accountant / Finance Manager, Single Family Office

The role

A private family with two homes and a country estate is looking for a finance professional to take over the whole of its household money administration: the books, the running costs, the purchasing and the calls.

Money leaves this household three ways — through bills, through cards and through purchases. This role stands over all three. It is not a back-office bookkeeping post: the ledger is the foundation, but the larger part of the job is owning the household's running costs, buying what the homes and their staff need, and handling every financial call and piece of correspondence, so that none of it reaches the family or their Personal Assistant.

The household

• Two homes: a country estate in Buckinghamshire with grounds staff, outbuildings, irrigation and machinery, and a London home.
• Staff: around ten household and estate employees, currently paid through an external payroll bureau. Payroll is moving in-house, and this role will run it.
• Systems: Xero for the ledger, Dext for invoice capture by email, and Soldo expense cards for staff. These are established; the postholder works within them.

Responsibilities

Keeping the books

1. Ledger and bills

• Process invoices from Dext into Xero, coded to property, estate, personal or staff, and published.
• Catch what capture misses — in particular the same invoice arriving twice in different formats.
• Prepare a weekly payment run for the family to authorise, with a clear schedule of what is due and when.
• Reconcile bank and card feeds monthly, so that nothing sits unidentified beyond the month it occurred in.
• Keep the supplier ledger: contacts, payment terms, and what each supplier is contracted to provide

2. Personal and travel spending

• Keep personal, household, estate and any business-related spending cleanly separated — defensibly, not approximately.

Booking travel remains with the Personal Assistant.

3. Reporting

• A monthly pack: cost per property, spend against budget, staff card spend as its own line, exceptions, and anything needing a decision.
• An annual budget for each home and for the estate, built with the family and tracked through the year.
• Clean year-end books for the family's accountants, with their queries answered directly.

Controlling what goes out

4. Utilities and recurring costs — the part of the role the family most wants filled

• One register of every recurring supply and service across both homes and the estate: energy and heating oil, water, broadband and phones, waste, alarm and CCTV monitoring, boiler, generator and plant servicing, TV licences, council tax and insurance. For each: supplier, account number, tariff or premium, renewal date and how it is paid.
• Read the bills, not just pay them. Track consumption month on month and investigate anomalies. On an estate an unexplained spike is usually a fault — a leak, a failed timer, a heater left running — and finding it early is where this role pays for itself.
• Own the renewal calendar. Nothing rolls on to a default tariff by inattention; options go to the family before each deadline, not after.
• Submit meter readings, challenge estimated bills, and reconcile final bills on every change of tariff or supplier.

5. Purchasing

• Large purchases and major works: obtain and compare quotations, check specification and warranty, negotiate price and terms, and place the order once the family has approved it — then see it through delivery, installation, snagging and a correct final invoice.
• Routine items for both homes, for the principals and for their staff — consumables, equipment, workwear, tools, supplies and replacements — bought on a household card within limits set by the family.
• Put anything predictable on standing order rather than researching and reordering it every few weeks.
• Handle returns, refunds, warranty claims, and damaged or missing deliveries.
• Keep a preferred-supplier list, with trade accounts and terms wherever they can be obtained.
• Code every purchase when it is ordered, not reconstructed afterwards.

6. Staff expense cards

• Issue and cancel cards, and set limits and category restrictions, so that the list of active cards always matches the list of current staff.
• Make sure every transaction carries a receipt and a purpose, and chase those who do not supply them.
• Reconcile card spend into Xero monthly.
• Review each cardholder monthly against their limit and their role. Anything unusual goes to the family — it is not settled privately with the cardholder.

**Card spending is authorised in advance by the card's limit, so the weekly payment run never sees it. The limits, the receipts and the monthly review are the only controls on it, and all three sit with this role.

Being the point of contact

7. Suppliers, HMRC, insurers and banks

• Suppliers and utilities: all calls and correspondence — queries, disputes, missing invoices, service failures, switching and negotiation — seen through to the end, including the ones that take forty minutes and three transfers.

A large part of this job is spent on the telephone. Candidates who see that as an interruption to the real work will not enjoy the role.

8. Approval calls and payments

Some transactions need a principal's own voice — bank verification of a payment, a card security check, a change to an account. The postholder makes these calls brief, rare and prepared.

• Know which account is right for each payment — which bank, which currency and which source of funds.
• Do everything around the call: references, amounts and payee details ready, the provider reached and the right department found — and only then bring the principal in. A minute of his time, not half an hour on hold.
• Group non-urgent approvals into an agreed slot.
• Confirm afterwards that each instruction was actioned, and keep a dated log.
• Record payments made and report them to the family office, as they overlap with its work on charitable donations and the principals' self-assessment with HMRC.

Projects and payroll

9. Construction project budget

The family has a major construction project under way at one of its properties.

• Keep its budget current in a single document: budgeted, committed, invoiced, paid and remaining.

This is tracking only. Assessing claims, variations, or who should bear a cost is for the employer's agent and the family's advisers.

10. Payroll

Payroll is coming in-house from the external bureau. The postholder manages the move and then runs payroll end to end:

• Taking over administration of the PAYE scheme from the bureau, with no break in pay or in HMRC submissions.
• Real Time Information submissions to HMRC for every pay run.
• Starters and leavers, pay changes, and statutory sick, maternity and paternity pay.
• Workplace pension auto-enrolment, contributions and re-enrolment.
• Year-end, including P60s, and P11Ds where benefits are provided.

The ideal candidate

• AAT Level 4 qualified, or equivalent.
• Must have managed an in-house payroll before — RTI, pension auto-enrolment, statutory payments and year-end — and be able to move a payroll across from a bureau.
• The CIPP Level 3 Payroll Technician Certificate, or Xero's UK payroll certification.
• Fluent in Xero and Xero certified.
• Several years running a full set of books to trial balance, including month-end reconciliation, budgets and project cost tracking.
• A proven record of managing suppliers and utilities — challenging bills, negotiating and switching contracts, and cutting costs.
• An experienced buyer who sources quotes, negotiates terms and sees every purchase through to delivery and a correct invoice.
• A background in a private household, family office or country estate.
• Experience running staff expense cards on Soldo or a similar platform.
• Confident and persistent on the telephone, and at ease dealing with suppliers, HMRC and insurers all day.
• Meticulous and self-directed, and raises a discrepancy rather than absorbing it.
• Absolute discretion.
• A full UK driving licence.