Graduate Finance Analyst

Ampa Holdings LLP; Birmingham; On-site; GBP 24,000 - 32,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a leading firm in Birmingham as a Graduate Finance Analyst. This role supports key financial processes and provides analytical insights that drive performance improvements. With opportunities for professional growth, you'll be managing a variety of reporting tasks and financial analyses within a supportive team environment.

Qualifications

• Competent in Excel, capable of handling large datasets.
• Experience in preparing financial reports and variance analysis.
• Working towards a recognized Accountancy qualification.

Responsibilities

• Preparing and distributing Flash reports before month-end.
• Supporting month-end close process and performance analysis.
• Assisting in forecasting and reporting cycles.

Skills

Excel

Data handling

Spreadsheet management

Education

Part-qualified Accountancy qualification or degree in Finance and Accounting

Tools

TM1 Planning & Analytics

Job description

Graduate Finance Analyst

Department: Ampa Group Services - Chief Financial Office - Planning and M&A - Commercial Finance - 9112

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Birmingham

Reporting To: Sanjay Patel

Description

Join Us as a Graduate Financial Analyst at Shakespeare Martineau!

Are you an ambitious, creative and driven individual ready to kick-start your career?

Let us introduce ourselves…

It’s the people at Shakespeare Martineau that make us so special. By understanding what our people want, giving them the support they need, recognising everyone’s contribution and realising the unique power of teams, together we win. As a firm we are focused on proactively building and developing diverse teams, bringing different backgrounds, personalities and perspectives together. We play to our strengths, pushing ourselves to be consistently better than yesterday and deliver amazing solutions for our clients. We empower our teams with a high degree of individual responsibility; we self-manage and encourage everyone to be responsible for their own learning, knowing it makes us even better at what we do! We believe in trusting our people to make the right decisions for themselves, from when and where you work, to how you dress; we focus on outputs.

Meet the team

To provide truly outstanding client service we work as one team. Our Business Operations Group is made up of business professionals who work with our legal professionals to provide market leading expertise to our clients. The Groups include; Finance, Operations, HR, Clients & Markets, IT, Risk and the Executive Leadership team. Our Finance team is made up of over 40 people who work from a variety of our office locations. The team work closely with our other business operations teams to provide a first class service. They are responsible for the sound financial management of the firm, including cash flow, budgeting, internal and external reporting and audit. They have responsibilities for the safe-keeping and operating of our clients’ funds held on account and also deal with credit control, work-in progress and billing, accounts payable and expenses.

The team also work closely with the Commercial Managers within each Business Unit to provide reporting and analysis along with finance business partnering support to all other areas of the business.

What you will be doing:

We are looking for a Graduate/Junior Finance Analyst to join our Commercial Finance team within the SHMA brand. You will provide dedicated support to the Commercial Managers and Head of Commercial Finance for SHMA. The role supports monthly close and reporting processes for SHMA, and is particularly focussed on improving process resilience and efficiency. The role also plays a key role in the forecasting and reforecasting cycles. Your insightful analysis will be a key part in reporting and improving performance within the legal teams.

Your key duties will be:

• Preparing and distributing Flash reports leading up to month end tracking the Firm’s fees against forecast Lead the month-end close process by preparing and posting the team’s standard journals
• Assisting with monthly commentary and variance analysis for team performance and identifying key trends, presenting findings back to the business Support the monthly target-setting exercises, for Fees and Cash, by preparing the underlying MI Prepare MI to support the Commercial Managers and business report and improve performance.
• This will include Weekly time reporting, Fortnightly chargeability analysis as well as other key metrics including Fees, Contribution, Trading ratios and Debt Support the Commercial Managers with ad-hoc requests regarding individual performance or client profitability analysis Support the Forecast and Reforecast cycles with preparation of historical MI, to facilitate reviews, and input into the planning and forecasting system
• Manage inputs into the WIP model to support reliable forecasting Support the consolidation of Team MI into a SHMA brand view Support the maintenance of static data in core systems, including fee earner charge-out rates and target hours Productionise more.
• Reusable solutions Key stakeholders will include the Commercial Managers and Head of Commercial Finance
• You will be expected to work with colleagues in other Commercial Finance teams as well as Central Finance
• You will also have exposure to the Team Leads of Fee earning teams, Brand MD

What you will need:

Skills and experience you will have:

• A part-qualified Accountancy qualification or working towards Accountancy qualification (or a degree in Finance and Accounting) to be highly competent in Excel with the ability to handle large amounts of data; a working knowledge of Pivot Tables / Lookups, Index function is essential.
• You should demonstrate good spreadsheet management practice the ability to tailor reports to the end user and highlight and interpret key findings, turning data into information
• Desirable: Working knowledge of using and running reports from TM1 Planning & Analytics, or similar Planning and Forecasting application Desirable

Benefits, Agile Working and Additional information

We embrace agile working and offer a blended approach to where and how we work.

We appreciate that people have different needs and preferences and we’re keen to be flexible, after all, we value what you do, not where you do it.

We have the following hubs across the UK: Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester, Lincoln, London, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Solihull, Stratford upon Avon, Sheffield and in the South; Crawley, East Grinstead, Lewes, Brighton, Eastbourne, Seaford, Peacehaven, Storrington, Chichester & Southampton as well as our Scotland office located in Edinburgh.

Additional information

Want to find more about our amazing benefits ?
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Please be aware, for some vacancies, where we receive high numbers of applications we may need to bring the close date forward.

Due to the nature of the work undertaken, confirmation of employment will be subject to a variety of checks which will be carried out once an offer of employment is accepted. Details of the checks can be found here.

Equal opportunities

Ampa Group is a committed equal opportunities employer. We seek to attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures. We value and respect individuality and encourage a culture within our business where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths and experiences. Everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, regardless of their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.