Senior Accounts Payable & Receivable Executive

Stratford, England, United Kingdom

7/4/2025

Strong financial controls. Smooth financial operations. Delivering at a fast pace.

Senior Accounts Payable & Receivable Executive

£37,000 - £39,000 (+ Benefits)

Reports to: Senior Finance Manager (Accounts Payable/ Receivable)

Department: Chief Operating Office

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Full time 35 hours per week

Location: Stratford, London. Office-based with high flexibility (1-2 days per week in the office).

Visa sponsorship: You must be eligible to work in the UK to apply for this vacancy. Cancer Research UK is not able to offer visa sponsorship.

Closing date: 11 July 2025 23:55

This vacancy may close earlier if a high volume of applications is received or once a suitable candidate is found, therefore we strongly recommend that you apply early to avoid disappointment. If you require more time to apply as part of a reasonable adjustment, please contact [email protected] as soon as possible.

Recruitment process: One competency-based interview

Interview date: From the week commencing 21 July 2025

How do I apply? We operate an anonymised shortlisting process in our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion. CVs are required for all applications; but we won’t be able to view them until we invite you for an interview. Instead, we ask you to fully complete the work history section of the online application form for us to be able to assess you quickly, fairly, and objectively.

At Cancer Research UK, we exist to beat cancer.

We are professionals with purpose, beating cancer every day. But we need to go much further and much faster. That’s why we’re looking for someone talented, someone who wants to develop their skills, someone like you.

Cancer Research UK’s Finance team’s credibility and professionalism in handling £684m in income fundraised by public generosity are essential to the smooth running of our organisation. The Accounts Payable (AP) team play a vital role in the Finance team’s mission by managing our aged credit balance and ensuring the charity’s payments across £692m in expenditure are paid on time.

As a Senior Accounts Payable (AP) / Receivable (AR) Executive, you will support the Senior AP/AR Finance Manager in overseeing daily AP & AR processes and performance, ensuring service level agreements and key performance indicators (KPIs) are met. This will involve managing the aged debt and credit accounts (including reconciliations and journal postings), while maintaining and implementing robust financial controls. Furthermore, you will play a key role in overseeing and supporting junior members of the AP & AR team by helping to resolve complex queries and issues, and providing training, guidance, development, and support to team members and end-users across Cancer Research UK on AP & AR processes.

This will be an autonomous and varied role where you will have the opportunity to contribute your AP & AR knowledge to support the continuous improvement of the team, while also gaining exposure across a range of projects, stakeholders, and teams. If you are an AP & AR professional who has overseen the Aged Debt and Credit accounts within large organisations, we’d love for you to join our mission.

What will I be doing?

• Coordinating and overseeing day-to-day Accounts Payable (AP) & Receivable (AR) service-level agreements. This includes:
• Supporting the Finance Manager in ensuring adherence to AP & AR service level agreements.
• Supporting the AP/ AR Manager and Senior AP/AR Manager in monitoring, prioritising, and delegating workloads for AP & AR team.
• Maintaining, reviewing, and continuously improving key performance indicators (KPIs), while ensuring these KPIs are met (including reconciliation, transactions, payments, and helpdesk queries).
• Providing weekly updates to the Senior AP/AR Manager through regular management reporting information (e.g. error logs or data captured through KPI reporting).
• Overseeing Cancer Research UK’s Aged Debt and Credit accounts:
• Ensuring that the accounts are regularly reconciled and cleared monthly.
• Posting and coding AR journals.
• Ensuring key AP & AR financial controls are in place and adhered to, including:
• Completing reconciliations.
• Providing an additional level of control around: customer approvals, payment checks and approvals, supplier reconciliation reviews, and purchasing cards.
• Supporting the AP/AR Manager, Senior AP/AR Manager, and the wider team in developing and implementing financial controls (especially in relation to the use of purchasing cards).
• Delivering training, guidance, development, and support to team members and end-users across Cancer Research UK on Accounts Payable and Receivable processes.
• Supporting the team when dealing with a high workload and complex AP & AR query escalations:
• Being the first point of contact for all escalations raised within AP and actively seeking solutions.
• Providing an excellent level of service and support to Cancer Research UK colleagues, suppliers, supporters, and other stakeholders.
• Developing and maintaining processing notes and documentation around best practices for the AP & AR function, ensuring any changes are recorded accurately and promptly.
• Collaborating with the Procurement team to deliver efficiencies between the Procure-to-Pay function.
• Supporting the team in delivering a range of AP, AR, and wider Finance transformation projects (such as resolving internal audit items and queries and reviewing the use of purchasing cards).
• Testing and reviewing improvements to finance systems, documenting any subsequent changes.
• Being the point of contact and deputising in the absence of the AP/ AR Manager.
  
  

What skills will I need?

• Experienced AP & AR professional who has operated within busy AP &AR functions handling a high volume of payments in large, complex organisations (c.£75m+ annual turnover/ c.4,000 headcount).
• A successful track record of overseeing Aged Debt and Credit accounts with experience reconciling the accounts and posting journals.
• Strong knowledge of AP & AR best practices and controls with a continuous improvement mindset.
• Demonstrable understanding of customer and supplier management.
• Effective time management and organisational skills with a proven ability to meet deadlines and set KPIs, while maintaining accurate attention to detail.
• IT Literate with Excel proficiency - dealt with large, complex data sets with multiple thousands of rows of data and is comfortable using VLOOKUPs and Pivot Tables.
• Strong customer focus with a solutions-driven mindset that ensures effective query resolution.
• Some experience in either direct line or matrix management or supporting more junior members of a team, and is comfortable delivering training to end-users, requisitioners, and team members.
  
  
  

Our organisation values are designed to guide all that we do.

Bold: Act with ambition, courage and determination

Credible: Act with rigour and professionalism

Human: Act to have a positive impact on people

Together: Act inclusively and collaboratively

We’re looking for people who can believe in and embody these organisation values and can use them to drive forward progress against our mission to beat cancer.

If you’re interested in applying and excited about working with us but are unsure if you have the right skills and experience we’d still love to hear from you.

What will I gain?

We create a working environment that supports your wellbeing and provide a generous benefits package, a wide range of career and personal development opportunities and high-quality tools. Our policies and processes enable you to improve your work-life balance, take positive steps in your career and achieve your personal wellbeing goals.

You can explore our benefits by visiting our careers web page.

Additional Information

For more information about working with us please visit our website or contact us at [email protected].

For more updates on our work and careers, follow us on: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube.

Our vision is to create a charity where everyone feels like they belong, benefits from and participates in, the work we do. We actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and cultures, in particular those from ethnic minority backgrounds who are currently under-represented.

We want to see every candidate performing at their best throughout the job application process, interview process and whilst at work. We therefore ask you to inform us of any concerns you have or any adjustments you might need to enable this to happen. Please contact [email protected] or 020 3469 8400 as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, we are unable to recruit anyone below the age of 18, so that we can protect young people from health & safety and safeguarding risks.