Remote Management Accountant - UK Remote, Occasional Travel to London
3 days ago
Manchester
Description Why join us? Swoon was founded in 2012 with a simple mission: to create distinctive designs that owners want to keep forever - and a lofty goal to spark home obsession everywhere. We’re an online-only furniture brand building a digital experience better than any store. We design original pieces in-house, and our innovative design process uncovers the next trend, fast. Our testing platform proves designs sell online at their intended price, and our data-led approach grows sales within families exponentially. Our distinctive look unlocks collaborations with leading retailers like John Lewis and many more - and we’re just getting started. This is a rare chance to own the numbers and reinvent how they’re produced. We’ve worked hard to move from a VC backed start-up to a profitable business and our monthly reporting is solid and trusted - but it’s built on too much manual effort. We want someone who will keep that board reporting rock-solid while completely transforming how it gets done. Picture month-end that runs in a fraction of the time, reconciliations that reconcile themselves, and live dashboards that answer leadership’s questions before they’re asked. We want a builder - someone genuinely excited by AI, automation and smart internal tooling - to redesign our finance engine from the inside out. The continuity of the management accounts and board pack is non-negotiable; everything behind it is yours to reimagine. If you’re ambitious, want to make your mark, and see a clear path to grow as the function and the business scale, this role is built for you. Reporting to the Head of Finance, you’ll join as our Management Accountant with solid experience preparing management accounts in Xero and a few year-end audits under your belt. Our financial statements aren’t hugely complex, but our operating model is varied and interesting: we trade across multiple channels and business models - our own site, retail partners like John Lewis, and licensing - each with revenue and costs to allocate accurately across channels. Retail experience with hands-on stock accounting is essential - getting stock right, including the reverse flows when product is returned, is at the heart of this role, and we need someone who can own the audit from start to finish. You’ll have an eye for detail and the ability to reconcile data across multiple systems so revenue and costs are recognised accurately. You’re a great communicator who enjoys working cross-functionally across the business. As the sole accountant in a finance team of four, you’re an all-rounder who can juggle competing priorities - and you’re always asking how the work could be done better, faster and smarter. Reporting & continuity • Monthly management accounts - P&L, balance sheet and cash flow to a seven-day hard close., • Board pack & MBR - produce the board pack and monthly business review, with clear commentary, and insight for the leadership team., • Results & insight - present performance to leadership and translate the numbers into decisions, not just data., • Revenue recognition - oversee revenue recognition process, including deferred revenue, cost of sales whilst ensuring business controls are in place to ensure accounting accuracy., • Budget & forecast support - maintain cost and Opex tracking, accruals and rolling-forecast inputs. Transform & automate • Reinvent the close - redesign month-end and reporting to be faster, leaner and far less manual, without ever putting board continuity at risk., • Build internal dashboards - create live, self-serve dashboards that give leadership and the wider business real-time visibility of the numbers., • Put AI and automation to work - identify, plan and roll out automation and AI across reconciliations, invoicing, accruals, reporting and routine finance tasks., • Champion better ways of working - lead automation planning and troubleshooting, and continuously hunt out processes to streamline, simplify or retire. Controls & reconciliations • Stock reconciliations - liaise with the warehouse to run monthly stock recs, including stock-in-transit and provisions., • Financial controls - strengthen controls and balance-sheet reconciliations across deferred revenue, debtors, accruals and prepayments., • Invoice coding - oversee the coding of invoices by the accounts assistant., • Expense approvals - approve company-wide expenses. Tax, audit & compliance • Year-end & audit - own the year-end process and the full audit, managing all communication with the auditor., • VAT & other returns - produce the quarterly VAT return and plastic packaging tax, liaising with HMRC as required., • Payroll taxes & benefits - run PSA and P11D submissions and all payroll-related returns (P45, P60s, P11Ds)., • EMI share options - run the bi-annual EMI share option process (HMRC valuation and employee contract write-up)., • HMRC - act as the key contact for all HMRC-related matters. Payroll & people • Payroll oversight - manage new-employee payroll setup and oversee the monthly payroll run by our external provider, including pension submissions., • Line management - supervise and develop the accounts assistant. Requirements • Essential, • Qualified ACA / ACCA / CIMA., • Retail experience - confident with stock reconciliations, stock provisions and inventory controls., • Experience as a full-circle management accountant (P&L, balance sheet, cash flow)., • Experience owning the year-end audit process., • Experience preparing month-end accounts in Xero., • Advanced excel / sheets and comfortable reconciling and dealing with large volumes of data, • A genuine enthusiasm for automation, AI and building better processes - and a track record of improving the way things are done., • Ambition to make your mark and progress as the role and business grow., • Able to work independently without supervision., • A great communicator who can explain finance concepts to non-finance colleagues., • Able to travel to London at least once per month, • Management experience, or ready to step up., • Nice to have, • Hands-on experience building dashboards or finance automations (e.g. BI tools, scripting, or AI-assisted workflows)., • Exposure to retail collaborations, marketplaces or multi-channel revenue. Benefits Upbeat, ambitious and collaborative – that’s us. We’re a lean team of 30, so if you relish responsibility and like to impact an outcome, we’re the place for you. We’ve made flexible working a permanent thing. Right now, the team works from home but we’re open to what people might need in the future. We hold weekly day workshops in London and if the team wants to get together in a co-working space, that’s fine too. We have a wide range of perks and benefits including: • Competitive salary, • Share options programme, • Bonus scheme, • Wellbeing allowance, • Pension scheme, • Private medical cover, • Your birthday as an additional day off, • A day off for volunteer/community work, • Friday 1pm finish in summer (now rolled out across the full year as a trial), • Free furniture on each anniversary of employment, • Increasing holiday allowance with tenure, • Study support, • Friends & family discount Liked what you read and keen to join us? Send us your application and we will get in touch very soon!
