Senior Financial Accountant

Job Title: Senior Financial Accountant

Location: Manchester City Centre

Salary: Competitive, plus benefits

Reports to: Financial Controller

About Us

gunnercooke is a Top 75 law firm recognised for over 90 industry awards. Launched in 2010, the firm has rapidly grown to over 500 lawyers across 15 global offices in the UK, US, Germany and Austria. Our breadth of expertise covers some of the most interesting and important emerging disciplines, from ESG and charity law, to blockchain and competition.

Collaboration is at the forefront of our award-winning culture and is what sets our firm apart from the rest. gunnercooke operates as a fee share model meaning our professionals join as self-employed advisors, free to design and develop the practice they’ve always wanted.

Our purpose is simple; to deliver a positive impact for our clients, provide a better life for our people and to leave a better world than we found. Our charitable arm, the gunnercooke foundation, enables us to directly engage with communities on social issues and to help charitable organisations grow.

gcTrust is the firm’s dedicated support team comprising specialists in finance, IT, marketing, compliance, recruitment, and partner and offices services. Our role is helping partners to set up, run, and scale up their practices, so they can focus on providing quality service to their clients.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced qualified accountant to step into a pivotal role in our financial reporting team, assisting the Financial Controller across all aspects of financial management. This includes day to day management of a small team of assistant accountants, preparation of management accounts and monthly financial reporting for gunnercooke LLP, preparation of management accounts for other small entities of the group, preparing reconciliations, contributing to accurate financial reporting throughout the year and being a key point of contact for queries from fee earners and other members of the finance department.

This is a high-profile role involving interaction across the business at all levels with both financial and non-financial people, providing accounting expertise and financial knowledge to our wider finance team to collaborate and ensure the maintenance of accurate financial records and reporting, with succession planning to a financial controller role alongside the expected growth and development of the finance team.

The ideal candidate will be resilient, commercially driven, and champion our culture and values being Compassionomics, Laser-like Focus, Humour, and being Boundaryless.

Responsibilities

• Day to day management and supervision of the assistant accountant team.
• Supporting the Financial Controller in running the day-to-day operations and processes of the department.
• Dealing with mid-level and high-level queries that come into the department from fee earners, clients and other gunnercooke colleagues.
• Coordinating month end processes, including paying partners, reconciling payments and postings on the system.
• Monitoring service levels and managing the delivery of the self-billing process to partners
• Preparation of accurate and timely management accounts and financial reporting for Gunnercooke LLP & supervision of the preparation of financial reporting for smaller group entities
• Driving process improvements and developing controls for a recently embedded finance system alongside the financial controller
• Assisting in the provision of supporting documentation and responses for the external auditors (Financial & Client money).

The Person

Skills and Abilities

• Professional Accounting qualification (ACA,ACCA,CIMA) with 3years + post qualification experience
• Experience in managing and developing junior team members
• Great attention to detail
• Outstanding organisational and interpersonal skills and thrives on meeting deadlines and delivering exceptional service.
• A calm, professional, welcoming approach with the ability to work under pressure and maintain resilience

Personal Attributes

• Be able to maintain a positive and cheerful demeanour to building excellent working relationships with a wide variety of colleagues and partners.
• Be very people oriented – want to be helpful and sort things out for people.
• Thrive on spinning many plates with a cool head and to empathise with those you are spinning them for.
• Willing to travel to London and occasionally work unsocial hours if business need dictates.
• Be a good team player demonstrating loyalty and commitment to the firm and your team.

Experience

• Applicants must have relevant experience of the role and experience of working within a busy office environment.
• Experience with custom or complex finance systems is also desirable.
• Knowledge and experience of the operation of a legal services business is desirable as is knowledge of the SRA Accounts Rules

For more information about gunnercooke please visit www.gunnercooke.com