Business Manager

Shaw Asphalters Ltd; Hamilton; On-site; NZD 88,000 - 106,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Professional development budget

Job summary

Shaw Asphalters Ltd in Hamilton seeks a Business Manager to own day-to-day operations and financial performance, bridging commercial strategy with on-site delivery. This role triangulates enquiries, resource planning, and cost control, turning office decisions into practical outcomes on the ground.

You will lead accounts (AP/AR, payroll), drive month-end analysis, procurement, and compliance while supporting automation to reduce repetitive data entry.

Qualifications

• Experience managing reception and triage of enquiries.
• Strong financial acumen with ability to read balance sheets and job-cost reports.
• Proficient in Xero and payroll processes.
• NZ work authorised and Waikato resident.
• Excellent communication with clients, suppliers and crews.

Responsibilities

• Triage and manage inbound enquiries; route to the right person.
• Own accounts function including AP/AR and payroll; maintain Xero.
• Conduct month-end and job-cost review and analysis.
• Procurement, supplier relations, and cost tracking.
• Coordinate operations: scheduling, fleet/plant, safety docs, risk, and compliance.

Skills

Xero

Finance & cost control

Communication

Planning & organisation

Accounts payable/receivable

Payroll

Job description

Business Manager

Shaw Asphalters: Hamilton

As Business Manager, you will take full ownership of the day-to-day operational and financial performance of Shaw Asphalters. Reporting to and working closely with the Managing Director, you will bridge the gap between commercial strategy and on-site delivery, turning decisions made in the office into outcomes on the ground, and feeding what happens on site back into how the business is run.

We are a Hamilton-based asphalt paving and civil contracting business: the owner and a ten-person crew, heading into our busiest summer yet. Your core focus will be to triage and manage reception and enquiries, optimise resource allocation, manage job costings and budgets, streamline operational workflows, and uphold our standards of health, safety and quality control, owning these functions outright rather than simply administering them. There is also an element of AR/AP management too.

We are working on automating a lot of the repeatable transactional work most businesses hire people to do, including accounts processing, job cost capture, and we are building more automation. That means less time on data entry, and more time on the parts that actually need a person: reviewing what the systems produce, working out what's really going on, and deciding what to do about it.

This role handles two key fuctions: delivering each job once it's confirmed, and maintaining the people, plant and financial systems that make delivery possible. Both call for real judgement. Reception and triage are a key part of it, but the bigger part of the job is the calls you make once the information is in front of you.

From day one:

• First point of contact for inbound enquiries: reception, triage, qualifying and routing
• Own the accounts function: AP/AR and payroll and maintaining Xero for accuracy
• Month end and job cost review and analysis
• Procurement, supplier relationships, and cost tracking

Within the first three months:

• Owning the people-management systems: coaching, competency and training tracking, performance: not managing a team day-to-day yet, but building and running the systems that will carry one
• Issues management: when something goes wrong between a crew, a supplier and a client, you're the one who resolves it, not just the one who flags it
• Driving the job cost review meetings, not just attending them
• Operational coordination: job scheduling, liaising with crews and suppliers, TMP and Corridor Access Request applications
• Health and safety documentation: SSSPs, JSEAs, client inductions, certification tracking
• Compliance and risk: insurance renewals, contracts, prequalification, company registers
• Fleet and plant: not just keeping fleet management current, but the commercial calls: resource management and optimisation of equipment
• Supporting the Managing Director's calendar and workload, and owning ad-hoc projects as required

Future

This role is deliberately the step before General Manager. You'll see every part of how this company works, which is exactly the grounding that progression needs.

Eventually, this role would cover full HR administration, building out our internal training programme, sales support, recruitment, and people leadership as the team grows. Digital. Board reporting. Strategy. Marketing & Growth.

What we need from you

This is a genuine Business Manager role, so we're after someone who thinks and plans like one: not just someone who can do admin tasks well:

• High level planning and organisation: able to run multiple workstreams at once, build the systems that keep them on track, and bring order to a growing, sometimes messy business
• Good commercial judgement and problem-solving: you can look at a job, a budget or a set of numbers, work out what's actually going on, and decide what to do about it, rather than just reporting what you find
• Strong people and issues management: resolving a problem between a crew, a supplier and a client without needing it escalated to the owner
• Genuine financial acumen: able to read a balance sheet, interrogate a job cost report, and spot when something's wrong. This matters more than years spent on manual bookkeeping.
• Working knowledge of accounts processes (receivables, payables, reconciliations, payroll), enough to review and quality-check automated outputs
• Strong Xero skills
• Strong communication: you'll be dealing directly with clients, suppliers and crews, and representing the business
• Full NZ driver licence, entitled to work in NZ, and living in the Waikato

Construction, civil or trades experience is a real advantage, but we'd rather have the right person and teach them the industry than the reverse.

What we're actually looking for

Above everything else: someone who is naturally, deeply organised, and brings genuine judgement to the role: not just someone who processes what's put in front of them. Someone who sees a problem and works out what to do about it, rather than someone who waits to be told.

Beyond that: pace: the owner moves fast and you'll need to keep up, and ideally get ahead. And an appetite to be stretched, because parts of this role will be new to you, and we'll invest in the training to close those gaps.

One honest filter, up front: if a lower start that grows with the business doesn't excite you (see The offer, below, for why), this probably isn't your role. If it does, keep reading.

The offer

We're calling this what it is: a Business Manager role, in scope and in judgement. The pay doesn't fully reflect that yet, and we want to be upfront about why: Shaw Asphalters is the owner and a ten-person crew today, and $88,000-$106,000 (dependent on what skills and experience you bring) is what that size can genuinely support to start. As the business grows, so does the pay for this seat: not on a fixed annual clock, but in step with the growth this role is central to driving.

• Reviews at three and six months look at the responsibilities you're actually carrying by then.
• Professional development budget.
• Forty-five hours a week, reflecting the pace of our summer season and the scope of the role.
• Privately owned business in a seasonal industry: there'll be busy periods that ask more of you, and we're upfront about that.