Client Finance Lead

McGarrah Jessee; Austin (TX); Remote; USD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

McGarrah Jessee is seeking a Client Finance Lead to bridge finance, brand, and project management. You will own client billing, WIP, and revenue recognition while partnering across departments to ensure accurate, timely financial reporting.

The role involves regular collaboration with controllers and finance leadership, oversight of financial governance, and proactive risk management in a remote, fully-billed environment.

Qualifications

• Experience coordinating with finance, brand and project management to ensure accurate reporting.
• Strong understanding of budgeting, billing, and revenue recognition processes.
• Ability to identify financial risks and communicate findings to stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary finance contact for assigned clients, accounts, and project teams.
• Partner with Account Management, Production, Business Affairs, Project Management, Media, and Accounting throughout the financial lifecycle of each job.
• Participate in recurring client finance, budget, billing, WIP, and job-status meetings.
• Provide client teams with visibility into project budgets, actual costs, commitments, billings, collections, and remaining funds.
• Proactively identify financial risks, unresolved issues, and opportunities, escalating as needed.
• Respond to internal and client questions related to budgets, estimates, invoices, POs, job status, and financial reporting.
• Own the financial setup and maintenance of client jobs within the agency's systems.
• Review scopes of work, client estimates, fee arrangements, billing schedules, and approved budgets before opening jobs.
• Confirm that jobs are supported by appropriate client authorization.
• Maintain job-level documentation and ensure records match approved scopes and POs.
• Coordinate job-code creation and communicate instructions to relevant departments.
• Coordinate with Production, Business Affairs, Media, and AP to identify missing invoices and remaining obligations.
• Support administration of scope changes and change orders, ensuring they are authorized and billable.
• Perform regular job-level reconciliations throughout the project lifecycle.
• Own the preparation, review, and timely submission of client invoices.
• Develop and maintain billing schedules aligned with contracts and milestones.
• Reconcile proposed billings to budgets, recognized revenue, and remaining authorizations.
• Ensure costs are billed per contractual terms.
• Review job-level work in progress, unbilled costs, deferred revenue, and other balances as part of monthly close.
• Maintain accurate WIP schedules and investigate aged or non-billable balances.
• Support revenue-recognition calculations and documentation.
• Monitor accounts receivable balances and invoice status for assigned clients.
• Follow up on outstanding invoices with Account Management.

Skills

Finance liaison

Billing management

Revenue recognition

WIP tracking

Accounts receivable

Cross-functional partner

Job description

We are on the lookout for a Client Finance Lead. This role will act as a key liaison between finance, brand, and project management to ensure needed reporting and data is shared out to appropriate teams and revenue is properly recognized. The role will have a close working relationship with The Controller and Head of Finance as a key component of the role.

What you'll be doing:

Client and cross-functional partnership

• Serve as the primary day-to-day finance contact for assigned clients, accounts, and project teams.
• Partner with Account Management, Production, Business Affairs, Project Management, Media, and Accounting throughout the financial lifecycle of each job.
• Participate in recurring client finance, budget, billing, WIP, and job-status meetings.
• Provide client teams with timely visibility into project budgets, actual costs, commitments, billings, collections, and remaining available funds.
• Proactively identify financial risks, unresolved issues, and opportunities, escalating material matters as appropriate.
• Respond to internal and client questions related to budgets, estimates, invoices, purchase orders, job status, and financial reporting.

Job setup and financial governance

• Own the financial setup and maintenance of client jobs and projects within the agency's financial and project-management systems.
• Review scopes of work, client estimates, fee arrangements, billing schedules, and approved budgets before opening jobs.
• Confirm that jobs are supported by appropriate client authorization, including signed scopes, approved estimates, purchase orders, or other written authorization.
• Maintain job-level documentation and ensure financial records agree with approved scopes, estimates, change orders, and client purchase orders.
• Coordinate job-code creation and communicate coding instructions to Account Management, Production, Business Affairs, Media, and other participating departments.
• Coordinate with Production, Business Affairs, Media, and Accounts Payable to identify missing vendor invoices and remaining financial obligations.
• Support the administration of scope changes and change orders, ensuring incremental work is properly authorized, budgeted, and billable.
• Perform regular job-level reconciliations throughout the project lifecycle.

Client billing

• Own the preparation, review, and timely submission of client invoices for assigned accounts and projects.
• Develop and maintain billing schedules aligned with contracts, scopes of work, project milestones, approved estimates, and client requirements.
• Reconcile proposed billings to approved budgets, recognized revenue, WIP, incurred costs, prior invoices, and remaining client authorization.
• Ensure that fees, labor, production, talent, media, travel, and other costs are billed in accordance with contractual terms.
• Maintain accurate billing trackers and provide visibility into billed, unbilled, and forecasted amounts.
• Resolve rejected invoices, missing documentation, portal issues, purchase-order discrepancies, and other billing exceptions.

WIP, AR, and Revenue support

• Review job-level work in progress, unbilled costs, unbilled fees, deferred revenue, and other project balances as part of the monthly close process.
• Maintain accurate WIP schedules and investigate aged, unsupported, or potentially non-billable balances.
• Support Finance leadership and Accounting with monthly revenue-recognition calculations and related supporting documentation.
• Monitor accounts receivable balances and invoice status for assigned clients.
• Partner with Account Management to follow up on outstanding invoices.
• Investigate payment delays, short payments, invoice deductions, client disputes etc, and elevate when necessary.
• Support cash forecasting by providing informed collection timing for material client balances.
• Assist with client profitability analysis, including labor performance, production margins, pass-through costs, over-service, write-offs, and scope changes.

This is a remote position.