Accounts Assistant

Hachette UK Distribution Limited; East Hagbourne; On-site; GBP 26,000 - 36,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

35 days annual holiday including Bank

Pension Plan

Life Assurance

Staff Events

Free onsite parking

Eye care vouchers

Generous discounts on books

Employee Assistance Programme

Job summary

Hachette UK Distribution is seeking an Accounts Assistant to join the Distribution Finance team. The role focuses on coding and routing invoices, recharging transport charges, weekly sales analysis, and monthly invoicing, while resolving supplier queries and maintaining accurate financial records.

The successful candidate will be comfortable with Excel and SAP or similar ERP, with opportunities to grow accounting knowledge, system expertise, and process improvements within a collaborative team.

Qualifications

• Experience within a similar accounting role.
• Experience of liaising with colleagues and customers at all levels.
• Owner mentality towards managing own workload and prioritise effectively.
• Experience of working with SAP or other large ERP systems.
• Experience working on some similar month end tasks.

Responsibilities

• Organisation, coding, routing for authorisation and chasing of all division accounts payable invoices.
• Analysis and summarising of transport related invoices to client level costings.
• Calculating and raising of monthly sales invoices to clients for our services.
• Calculation of premium carriage charges to include on client invoices.
• Raising and chasing of sundry invoices.
• Support the maintenance of financial systems and contribute to process improvement initiatives.

Skills

Attention to detail

Excel

Communication

Team collaboration

Proactive

Tools

SAP

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Word

Outlook

Teams

Job description

Who we are and what we do

We, Hachette UK Distribution, are the leading book distribution company in the UK. We are one of the most advanced distribution centres in Europe, with leading-edge automation and modern systems which will ensure world-class service to customers and publisher clients. We ship in excess of 60 million books globally each year and supply one out of every four books to the UK trade.

Our mission is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity.

Hachette UK Distribution is part of the Hachette UK publishing group.

What you'll be doing

The Accounts Assistant position within the Distribution Finance department is a varied and rewarding opportunity for a motivated individual seeking to grow and develop their finance career.

The role provides key support to the Distribution Finance team and senior stakeholders through the coding and routing of invoices, recharging transport related charges through detailed analysis, weekly sales analysis, calculation and raising monthly sales invoices and sundry invoices, answering publisher queries, managing the suppliers and resolving associated queries and/or discrepancies.

The position plays an important role in providing accurate and timely financial data to support business decision-making. The successful candidate will be comfortable working with excel, and ideally SAP or a similar ERP, while ensuring the maintenance of accurate, compliant, and well-controlled financial records.

The role would suit a proactive individual with a positive, can-do attitude and strong communication skills, both written and verbal. The ability to work collaboratively as part of a team, as well as with stakeholders across the wider organisation, is essential.

The position is ideal for someone looking to further their accounting knowledge, system expertise, and process improvement skills.

Role Specific Duties

• Organisation, coding, routing for authorisation and chasing of all division accounts payable invoices.
• Analysis and summarising of transport related invoices to client level costings.
• Calculating and raising of monthly sales invoices to clients for our services.
• Calculation of premium carriage charges to include on client invoices.
• Raising and chasing of sundry invoices.
• Calculation and crediting of Mixed Damages.
• Answering publisher queries.
• Own the weekly sales process.
• Manage Supplier related queries, ensuring prompt and proactive resolution.
• Maintenance of several analysis spreadsheets.
• Support the maintenance of financial systems and contribute to continuous process improvement initiatives.
• Understanding other areas within finance team to provide support and create resilience within the team.
• Provide ad-hoc support to the Distribution finance team as required.
• Any other duties as may be reasonably requested in line with the job role.

Customer / Client relations

• Respond promptly and professionally to client queries in line with agreed Service Level Agreements.
• Ensuring that Clients’ key reporting requirements can be met where possible.
• Maintain strict confidentiality at all times in relation to financial data and sensitive business and Publisher information.

Who we are looking for

Knowledge, Experience & Qualifications:

• Experience within a similar accounting role.
• Experience of liaising with colleagues and customers at all levels.
• Owner mentality towards managing own workload and prioritise effectively.
• Experience of working with SAP or other large ERP systems.
• Experience working on some similar month end tasks.

Skills & Attitudes:

• High level of attention to detail.
• Excellent organisational skills.
• Positive with a “can do” attitude and demonstration of growth mindset towards development of role.
• A hunger to learn and understand.
• Flexible and can work under pressure and on own initiative.
• A good communicator with the ability to prioritise and build strong relationships across multiple functions/businesses at all levels.
• Able to use own initiative and proactively identify areas for improvement.
• Excellent IT skills including (Microsoft Word, Excel, Teams and Outlook).
• Be flexible and a team player.

What we offer

Our people are our greatest asset and our benefits reflect this. Therefore, we offer an extensive list of benefits that include:

• 35 days annual holiday including Bank Holidays
• Pension Plan and Life Assurance schemes
• Company enhanced family policy including maternity, paternity and shared parental
• Reward programme giving discounts, savings and cash back at numerous retailers
• 2 Community Days per year
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Generous discounts on books we publish
• Mental Health First Aiders / Champions and an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development Programmes including Mentoring
• Staff Events
• Many employee networks to join
• Free onsite parking
• Free tea and coffee

Our commitment

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds.

If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend your interview, please let us know.

We will notify all candidates of the outcome of their application.