Finance Officer
9 days ago
Croydon
We are seeking a diligent and organised Finance Officer to support the day-to-day financial operations within a Multi-Academy Trust environment. This role is central to ensuring accurate processing of financial transactions, maintaining robust financial controls, and supporting budget holders across multiple schools. The successful candidate will work closely with school leaders, budget holders, and the central finance team to ensure invoices, payments, reconciliations, and ledger postings are processed accurately and in line with financial procedures. Key Responsibilities Role information: • Hourly rate: £17 per hour, • Contract type: 2 month temporary to permanent, • Start date: May 2026, • Process supplier invoices, ensuring accuracy, correct coding, and appropriate authorisation, • Resolve invoice queries by liaising with suppliers, schools, and internal stakeholders, • Maintain accurate records of outstanding invoices and supplier statements, • Raise purchase orders in line with approved budgets and delegated authorities, • Ensure purchase orders are correctly authorised prior to commitment, • Monitor purchase order balances and follow up on outstanding or incomplete orders, • Perform regular bank reconciliations, investigating and resolving discrepancies promptly, • Process banking transactions including receipts, payments, and transfers, • Prepare and post journals to the general ledger, including corrections and reallocations, • Ensure transactions are accurately coded to the correct cost centres and accounts, • Act as a key point of contact for budget holders on routine finance queries, • Provide guidance on budget availability, coding, and financial processes, • Ensure financial records are maintained in accordance with Trust policies and public-sector regulations, • Support internal and external audit requests by providing transactional evidence, • Use finance systems such as IRIS Financials or similar accounting software, • AAT qualification or studying towards AAT, • Strong experience with purchase ledger, invoicing, and bank reconciliations, • Experience using accounting systems and Excel, • Experience working within the education sector in a finance capacity, • Good organisational skills with the ability to prioritise workload, • Enhanced DBS clearance is required for this role