About the role

This is a part-time role (8 hours per week) to provide management accounting and budgeting support to our COO and team, including day-to-day liaison with external accountants and support to individual budget holders.

Our core hours are 10am to 4pm Monday to Friday. We would prefer you to split the hours across at least three days of the week (within core hours), but are open to alternatives. Ideally you would be able to attend fortnightly team meetings which are held on Tuesday afternoons.

The initial contract is for 12 months only. However, this is a new role and there may be scope to increase the hours or make the role permanent in future depending on the needs of the Lab and availability of funding.

The role can be performed from home (UK only), or from our office in London, or a mixture of the two. See below for further details on location.

Key responsibilities of the role include:

Day-to-day

• Review incoming invoices, send these on to our external accountants and ensure these are paid in a timely manner

• Prepare or approve invoices and purchase orders

Monthly

• Review monthly management accounts provided by external accountants, ensuring in particular that allocations to specific funders are correct

• Support managers to control their budgets

• Monitor the Lab’s cash and reserves positions, as well as our earned income position (re: VAT registration)

• Chasing and reviewing team expense claims

• Support monthly payroll file reviews

Quarterly

• Prepare / support preparation of papers for Finance and Operational Risk Committee meetings (a subcommittee of our board)

Annually

• Support the COO with the annual accounts preparation process and audit

• Complete annual updates to staff day rate calculations

Ad hoc and/or one-off

• Support the establishment of an additional bank account

• Support the preparation of financial information for funding bids and funder reporting

• Support the development and implementation of finance-related templates and processes

• Other finance-related matters as required.

• If time allows, it is likely you will also support the COO in some ongoing work on our data policies, but no prior experience is required for this element.

Your profile

We’re looking for the following skills and experience:

• qualified or part-qualified accountant (or equivalent experience), ideally with management accounting experience in charities with income up to £1.5m

• able to translate ‘finance speak’ into plain English

• able to work flexibly in an environment where the funding position can change rapidly

• commitment to the aims and values of the Lab, including to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, and an openness to continual reflection, learning and development.

We are committed to providing equality and fairness for all and not to discriminate on any grounds, including gender, marital status, race, ethnic origin, colour, nationality, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, mental health, religion or age. We encourage and celebrate the different qualities that our colleagues, and others we work with, bring to our work, and we believe that seeing things from a wide range of different perspectives helps us to resolve problems, adapt our approaches and develop as an organisation.

About the Lab

The Finance Innovation Lab is a UK charity working to transform the financial system for people and planet. This year we were listed in both the the 'Escape 100 best organisations to escape to', and the 'SE100 top 100 social enterprises in the UK'

Dysfunctions in the financial system lie at the root of many of today’s challenges, from climate change and economic crises, to poverty, marginalisation, and inequality. We believe it doesn’t have to be this way. 

We work for deep, lasting change to the financial system to make it democratic, sustainable, just and resilient. We create this change by building the power of a community of systems-changemakers and developing ambitious initiatives that transform the financial system for people and planet. You can read a summary of our 2030 strategy here.

Working with us

The Lab aims to embody the kind of organisation we think should be the norm: fully human, collaborative and compassionate. You'll build relationships with colleagues you respect and admire and who feel the same way about you. You'll feel part of a broader community of inspiring change-makers.

We are committed to investing in personal growth. Everyone has a £1,000 p/a training budget, coaching support, and an average of 1 day a month to complete learning (pro-rata).

You will also get a 5% pension contribution, plus 5 weeks holiday + public holidays (pro rata) + Lab closure week in August.

We offer all employees up to £450 to purchase equipment for your home working arrangements, as needed.

You can read more about our team on our website here. The Lab is a 32-hour week organisation.

More on location

For remote applicants, please note you may be required to come to our London office for elements of the team induction and for other team meetings. This would not be more than once a month. However, we don’t want this to be a barrier to your application and may be negotiable, so if it would not be possible to travel to our office please indicate this in your application. If you prefer to discuss this before applying, please get in touch.

Interviews are expected to take place on the afternoon of Friday 12 August, via Zoom.

Shortlisted candidates may also be asked to complete a short Excel exercise in the week of 1 August, and more details on this will be provided to relevant candidates. If you have any questions or concerns about this element of the process, feel free to get in touch.

Your application

Please note: although we do request you include your CV, we will NOT review this unless you score highly on the application questions, so please ensure you answer each of these fully and carefully.

General tips for candidates are available here. For a more detailed look at how we recruit see our recruitment insights blog here.

Given the limited number of hours per week in this role we regret we cannot accept job share applications for this position.

We can only accept applications from those with the right to work in the UK.