Assistant Accountant London, England
Job description
The Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts (SFCT) is the operating office of independent grant-making trusts and operational charities established by members of three generations of the Sainsbury family. We exist to provide economies of scale in the management of the organisations' activities. Each organisation is an independent legal entity with its own separate and autonomous board of trustees, actively led by an individual member of the Sainsbury family.
This role will support the work of the Finance team in accounting work and production of reports focused around supporting the impact investment activities of the trusts. This is a new role and it offers a unique opportunity to gain experience working with a large and prominent group of charities. It is an opportunity to leverage existing knowledge and develop new skills.
The role will be part-time (approx. 50%, by agreement). Exact working patterns could be reduced hours over a week or fixed hours for a reduced number of days. It will be a contract role for one year (with the possibility of moving to permanent).
Duties & Key Responsibilities:
- Providing accounting and administrative support for the Impact Investment activities including:
- Maintaining accounting and other records of impact investment activities.
- Reconciliation of multi-currency bank accounts.
- Liaison with banks/administrators.
- Production of reports for a variety of audiences internal and external including investment meetings, auditors, trust executive, trustees, investment advisors.
- Producing analysis and reports on the activities of grant-making trusts.
- Accounting analysis of investment portfolios.
- Producing management accounting reports e.g. cost/variance analysis.
- Key control reconciliations.
- Other project-based work.
- Cashflow forecast reporting for calls and distributions.
- External communications with external investment administrators and investees.
- Interpret and understand investment reports to determine net asset value (NAV).
- Looking after investments across 6 different Trusts, ensuring reconciliation and coding is accurate.
- Have oversite of monthly reconciliations and technical supervision of finance officer activities.
- Able to organise a varied workload and to be proactive in arranging paperwork and instruction in response to new investment calls.
- Keeping impact investment knowledge up to date.
Experience
- Good experience of working in a Finance team. Performing a range of accounting activities, including reconciliations, producing Excel reports, journal posting and administrative tasks.
Skills & Abilities
- Very good PC skills including Microsoft Office (Word, Outlook, and Excel) and accounting software.
- The ability to create and maintain Smartview reports in Excel would be an advantage.
- Excellent attention to detail and accuracy in data entry and record keeping.
- Effective communication skills.
- Problem solving approach and shows good judgement on when to escalate a matter to the next level.
Knowledge & Education/Training
- Knowledge of accounting processes from working experience and/or study of AAT or another accounting qualification.
- An understanding of financial investment would be an advantage.
Job Types: Part-time, Fixed term contract
Contract length: 12 months
Part-time hours: 17.5 per week
Salary: From £38,742.00 per year
Benefits:
- Cycle to work scheme
- Employee discount
- Health & wellbeing programme
- Paid volunteer time
- Private medical insurance
Work Location: Hybrid remote in London
