Commercial Finance Manager

Forvis Mazars; City of Westminster; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading finance company is seeking a qualified accountant to take on a crucial role in financial planning and commercial insight. This position requires strong commercial acumen and involves budget management, sales forecasting, and stakeholder engagement. Ideal candidates will have experience in wholesale or merchandising, excellent communication skills, and a knack for problem-solving. Benefits include substantial holiday allowance and a healthcare cash plan.

Benefits

Up to 33 days holiday per annum

50% discount

Subsidised BUPA Dental Insurance

Healthcare cash plan

Life Assurance

Interest free season ticket loan

Pension Contribution

Qualifications

• Qualified accountant with relevant industry experience.
• Experience in wholesale or merchandising functions is desirable.
• Strong communication skills for effective business partnering.

Responsibilities

• Lead budget and reforecasts, ensuring accurate financial forecasting.
• Review and challenge merchandise forecasts for robust planning.
• Monitor KPIs to ensure alignment with business goals.

Skills

Financial planning

Commercial insight

Stakeholder management

Problem solving

Excel modelling

Education

Qualified accountant (ACA/ACCA/CIMA or equivalent)

Tools

BI/Oracle

Job description

About the Role

This is a newly created role where you will be working with the buying, merchandising and wholesale teams to maximise profitability. This includes supporting the Senior leadership team and the Senior Commercial Finance Manager to provide financial insights to support the commercial decision making across departments. As lead finance person for your areas, you will be responsible for financial planning and commercial insight with a focus on sales, gross margin and stock. Responsibilities will include preparation of forecasts, commercial analysis and budget control. This is an excellent role for a candidate who has strong commercial acumen who strives to deliver continuous improvement. This is a maternity cover role.

Key Responsibilities

• Take a leading role in the budget and reforecasts, responsible for delivering accurate forecasts, capturing your business areas requirements and managing budget control against these targets.
• Responsible for sales and margin forecasting and trade analysis, supporting and challenging cross functionally, up to director level, to ensure robust plans are set and followed through.
• Ensuring the business are delivering KPI's that align with the business' long-term plan.
• Review and challenge merchandise forecasts (inc WSSi's) to ensure plans are robust and appropriate actions are taken.
• Scenario modelling to support the business, understanding the impact on financials and providing recommendations to the business. This includes business cases to support wholesale expansion into new markets.
• Manage stock provisions, ensuring they are complete and accurate, aligning with trade activity.
• Providing financial support in managing terminal stock including working with 3rd parties.
• Monitor KPIs across your departments to ensure alignment with forecasts, support business understanding of the key factors impacting results and support the heads of to drive performance.
• Reviewing and challenging our trading calendar to ensure we're maximising profitability and meeting KPI's.
• Business Partner with your departments to ensure that financial impact of decisions are considered and actions are taken to drive financial performance.
• Support the Senior Commercial Finance Manager to actively seek opportunities and manage risks across the business, providing clear and concise input to the monthly latest view forecast.
• Instigate investigations into weekly and month end variances. Analysis, drilling down, interrogating, and establishing root causes, highlighting risks and opportunities against targets.
• Own the production of Month end postings commentary. Review channel P&Ls with budget owners at senior leadership and director level, providing insights and recommendations for future actions.
• Ad hoc commercial analysis as required.

Qualifications

• Qualified accountant (ACA/ACCA/CIMA or equivalent)
• Relevant industry experience a must, wholesale / merchandising function experience desirable
• Business Partnering experience able to demonstrate ability to manage and influence stakeholders
• Experience working with BI/Oracle is desirable.
• Excellent communication skills - able to tell a complex story in a compelling manner via all means of communication (written, visual and verbal)
• Problem solving - analyse and understand complex data and situations to recommend the optimal solution
• Results focused - delivers work end to end to conclusion in a planned and controlled manner
• Excel modelling - demonstrable experience of building models and reports from a blank canvas

Benefits

• Up to 33 days holiday per annum
• 50% discount
• Subsidised BUPA Dental Insurance
• Healthcare cash plan and Life Assurance
• Interest free season ticket loan
• Pension Contribution

Equal Opportunities

We are committed to creating an environment where we can all be proud to work and be ourselves. Part of this commitment is being an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, and age.