Accounts Receivable Assistant - Dubai Campus

Heriot-Watt University; United Arab Emirates; On-site; AED 60,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A prestigious university in the UAE is seeking a detail-oriented Accounts Receivable Assistant to manage student financial records and coordinate tuition fees and refunds. The ideal candidate will have strong customer service skills and relevant experience in an educational environment. This role offers a collaborative atmosphere and opportunities for process improvements in a dynamic finance team.

Qualifications

• Experience in a school or higher education environment.
• Computer literate in Word and Excel.
• Ability to cope with pressure at peak times.

Responsibilities

• Manage student financial records and process tuition fees.
• Prepare invoices, statements, and reports.
• Support debt management and provide advice on financial policies.

Skills

Attention to detail

Customer service skills

Communication skills

Multi-tasking ability

Education

Minimum of two years' experience as a Cashier or Assistant Accountant

Excellent English language skills

Tools

Word

Excel

Oracle Fusion ERP software

Job description

Overview

Purpose of Role

We are looking for a detail-oriented and customer-focused Accounts Receivable Assistant to join our Finance team. The role involves managing student financial records, processing tuition fees, scholarships, discounts, waivers, and refunds, handling multiple payment methods, issuing receipts, and supporting debt management. You will prepare invoices, statements, and reports, provide advice to students and stakeholders on financial policies, and collaborate closely with Admissions, Registry, and other departments to ensure smooth processes. The ideal candidate will have excellent communication and customer service skills, strong attention to detail, integrity in handling confidential information, and proficiency in finance systems (ERP experience preferred). This is a hands-on role in a busy office, offering the chance to contribute to process improvements and deliver excellent service to our students and community.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

Banking

• Managing the routine admin relationship with the bank.
• Issues with PDCs (wrong dates, amounts, signatures, insufficient funds...)
• Requesting return of PDCs held within the cheque warehousing facility of the bank.
• Updating and requesting approval of any changes to bank mandates etc.
• Any other bank related administration.
• Analysing and posting bank transactions in the accounting system.
• Reporting on daily balances.
• Reconciling bank statements.
• Liaising with the UK based Treasury Team as and when necessary on any of the above related matters.

Cash management

• At peak times, assist the cashiers with their duties: receiving student payments, issuing receipts and invoices, updating student financial records.
• End of day cash management processes.
• Prepare banking deposits.

Credit control

• Assist Credit Controller by reviewing / reconciling student financial records and preparing student debtor reports.
• Correct / apply adjustments to student financial records where necessary. On the instruction of the Credit Controller place student accounts on hold (financial) and off hold (financial) on the student registry system (Banner).
• Monitoring receipts from external organisations vs sales ledger information and prepare customer debtor reports.
• Provide reports to the credit controller and any other necessary paperwork / data gathering to support the debt management process.

Invoicing

• Create and Issue all external sales invoices as and when advised

Education, Qualifications & Experience

Essential :

• Minimum of two years' experience as a Cashier or Assistant Accountant, preferably within a school / higher education environment.
• Excellent English language skills including reading, writing, speaking and listening.
• Computer literate in Word, Excel, databases and different software.
• Positive interpersonal and communication skills.
• The ability to multi task and cope with a degree of pressure at peak times.
• Experience of using an online banking platform to run enquiries and review transactions.

Desirable :

• Experience of Higher Education
• Specific Oracle Fusion ERP software package knowledge and experience

Heriot-Watt University Values

With a history dating back to 1821, Heriot-Watt University has established a reputation for world-class teaching and professionally relevant, leading-edge research, which has made it one of the top UK universities for business and industry.

We are a vibrant, forward-looking university, well known for the quality of our degrees with employers actively seeking out our graduates. Heriot-Watt is also Scotland’s international university with an unsurpassed international in-country presence. We deliver degree programmes to circa 30,000 students in 143 countries around the world, have a further overseas campus in Dubai and boast the largest international student cohort in Scotland.

At Heriot-Watt we’ve created an environment that nurtures innovation and leadership - where our researchers, staff and students can realise their potential and develop their ambitions.

We are proud of our collegiate atmosphere and integrated teaching and research approach which has helped to build a community of committed academics and highly motivated students. Our focus on careers delivers results and we’ve an excellent reputation for graduate employability.

In addition to the Edinburgh campus, we currently have campuses in the Scottish Borders, Orkney, Dubai and Malaysia. For all of our campuses we aim to provide stimulating, supportive environments conducive to effective learning and research, where staff and students can excel. At Heriot-Watt, we have an established set of values that help us to nurture innovation and leadership, and show our commitment to continuous improvement and development in all our activities.

Our values describe our deeply held beliefs and our community spirit. They characterise not only how we are as a higher education institution but also frame how we want to be.

• Belong
• Collaborate
• Inspire
• Celebrate

As learning, living and working institution, we use our values as the building blocks of how we go about doing our work and how we each conduct ourselves as members of Heriot-Watt University. They represent what binds us together as a University community and help us to become the best at what we do.