Senior Community Management Accountant at Amber

Amber is an award-winning, fast-growing vibrant business on a mission to be the UKs # 1 Utility Consultancy. Our mission is to fix utilities, save the planet, and make people happy.

Working at Amber, means work-life balance is cared about, your achievements are celebrated, and your hard work is recognised. We’re currently going through rapid and transformation growth, and are excited to welcome an experienced Management Accountant to join our Community Finance team.

This role would sit within Community Utilities finance team. Our Community Utilities product provides resident billing and customer support services to landlord and building managers within the Build-To-Rent (BTR) sector. The role is critical in ensuring the accurate and timely processing and reporting of financial transactions for amber, the residents, and landlords of its clients.

Reporting directly to the Group Finance Director, the role will be responsible for developing, implementing, and maintaining the client reporting and control environment for CU. In addition, the role holder will play an important role in business partnering with different teams within Amber and with our external clients.

This is an opportunity to add real value to Amber’s offering to our Net Zero Community Clients – visibility of financial performance is increasingly critical to our clients and this role is key in providing that visibility, guidance and challenge to our clients.

What will you be doing?

Development of our financial reporting suite for our Net Zero Community clients

Develop our existing reporting offering to encapsulate wider financial and contract performance metrics.

Work closely with the Group FD and CFO to ensure we deliver a high quality, timely and valued service for our internal and external clients.

Establish effective internal relationships to promote collaborative working across the Net Zero Community delivery and operational teams.

Promote a continuous improvement and a proactive and positive culture.

Ability to assess and address client risk, for example, in regards to the financial performance of their site.

Finance Stategy

Deliver strategic review of how Net Zero Community finance function is operating and the delivery of our financial outputs; looking to make continuous improvement for both the business and for our clients; examples include looking to digitise processing and information.

Undertake a review of our current systems and processes to improve efficiency and data visibility.

Work closely with other teams (Net Zero Community Operations, Utility Accounting) to implement and improve processes and workflows to ensure they are effective, have clear ownership and deliver the internal data/metrics required.

Financial Reporting & Management

Delivering intuitive financial reporting to customers and working with customers to make improvements that improve their satisfaction (Customer Centred value).

Proactive engagement with our client finance teams – acting as their trusted business partner in relation to the financial performance of their sites.

Responsible for internal processes to ensure reporting is robust, accurate and timely; and that it adds value to our clients.

Cash Collection from Landlords

Responsibility for all client cash flows in regards to our services.

Ensuring recharges and request for payments are accurate, delivered on time, are understood by our clients.

Working with the finance teams, within client organisations, to drive timely payment to Amber.

From time to time this may include prompting customers to pay suppliers directly, where we are not delivering ‘bill pay’ – as this will support the relationship with our suppliers.

Customer Engagement

Maintaining a strong relationship with Net Zero Community’s client finance teams, acting as the finance key point of contact and working closely with the client success team to ensure we deliver our contractual commitments to our clients.

Ensure successful financial onboarding processes are in place for new Net Zero Community clients.

What does good look like?

Essential

Previous experience of communicating and handling client relationships is a priority. The role holder must demonstrate that they provide clarity, depth of understanding and excellent communication skills when dealing with internal and external clients.

Extensive experience in financial reporting – specifically, this is reporting financial data to non-financial customers and not statutory financial reporting.

Outstanding communication and presentation skills (written and verbal) to all levels of an organisation both business and technical audiences including exec level.

Strong analytical, planning, and organizational skills with an ability to manage competing demands.

Operating successfully at an SMT level

Extensive experience in financial reporting. Allied to this, excellent IT skills and the ability to implement process improvements are essential skills.

Strong organisational skills, including teamwork planning and engagement.

Can-do positive outlook (glass half full) to overcome difficult ongoing workflows from time-to-time.

Strong listening and play-back skills – to provide clarity on what success looks like/key outcomes.

“Say what you are going to do, do what you say” approach that marries with the ability to concisely update the SMT on the facts, completion dates and progress in weekly ‘flash update’ type meetings.

The candidate will hold a recognised accountancy qualification (e.g. ACA, CIMA) and will be able to demonstrate a good experience of dealing with non-financial team members and external customers.

Why Choose Amber?

Joining an incredible group of people, all on a journey to save the planet, why not? But really… the biggest reason people choose stay at Amber is down to our culture. We have a friendly, informal and relaxed culture, where you are encouraged to bring your true self to work day in, day out. We offer a flexible working environment meaning, you can work where, when and how you want to. We focus on output above everything else. Aside from this, we do also have our competitive benefits package… and not forgetting that we do have an unbeatable view from our Cardiff City Centre office, featuring a fully stocked bar, pool table and lots of plants!

Private medical care

Birthday day off

Income protection

Monthly, quarterly and annual social events! Click here to view more on our trip away for Amberfest!

Enhanced primary and secondary caregiver scheme

Loyalty vouchers

Here at Amber, we see diversity and inclusivity as a priority and we are always looking for individuals who bring something different to the team. We are an equal opportunity employer and we welcome applications from all backgrounds. We use blind sifting at application stage to support this, meaning your details are anonymised aside from your work and educational experiences.

About Amber

Amber grew from the belief that the utilities industry was ready for change. That businesses being overcharged and underserved by their consultants deserved better.

So we dedicated ourselves to providing a genuine alternative – and set about becoming a partner businesses could trust to look after their best interests.