Senior Manager - Business Services & Outsourcing - Manchester

Ideas | People | Trust

This is a chance to join a dynamic and forward thinking team advising ambitious entrepreneurial businesses, embracing cloud tools and technology to deliver business services and outsourcing to fast growing businesses. Our team supports a wide range of exciting clients in sectors including online retail, renewable energy, real estate and technology. Our focus is to help clients succeed through simplifying the day to day of doing business, and also helps businesses design their systems and processes, delivering outsourced services, producing business information to help decision making and advising evolving businesses through workshops, forecasting, systems advice and technical accounting.

Our team of business advisors collaborates to focus on meeting evolving client needs, working closely with other teams to deliver the right expertise from across BDO both domestically and internationally. As one of the leading global firms of accountants, we are ideally placed to help businesses looking to scale to the next stage.

In this role you will help clients as they grow and help grow and develop our services and our people, working closely with the leadership team and others to support clients as they change and adapt. Due to the nature of the client base all the team are expected to offer practical support and advice, be able to get into detail but also stand back and deliver insights, and need to be able to quickly adapt as clients present new challenges. This is a fun and dynamic environment, offering real advice to help client succeed.

At BDO you can be yourself - we value you as an individual and want you to realize your career aspirations. We will give you the challenge and support you need and you are able to shape your own career according to your strengths, skills and personality. Working at BDO enhances your professional development at all stages of your career. Few firms offer the same breadth and quality of work, responsibility and experience. We recognize and reward your high performance and you have the opportunity to excel and share in our success.

We work on a large variety of clients largely within the SME space. In the role, you will:

• Manage your own portfolio of clients, and discuss business issues with them regularly
• Help win and on-board new clients, ensuring their requirements are delivered
• Manage quality and risk with your own clients, but also assist, design and develop with processes and procedures across the department working with the wider management team
• Confidently acts as a major point of contact within the firm for the client together with the partner. Including anticipating clients’ needs and requests, keeping clients informed of progress in all aspects of the service provided and maintaining regular contact with the client
• Be aware of wider business issues, and engage in discussion with clients to help challenge their plans and identify practical solutions to assist them.
• Review monthly and annual financial information, ensuring accuracy and also delivering insights to help business owners make decisions
• Review statutory accounts and disclosures under UK GAAP and other relevant accounting frameworks.
• Uses knowledge and understanding of the client, business drivers, and technology to design custom or complex KPI dashboards.
• Collaborate with clients and targets to craft compelling and integrated solutions- connecting our services to their needs, and communicating proposals to clients in a way that is easy to understand and identifies the values the client will be receiving.
• Periodically review solutions for clients to determine if they are still appropriate for the current state of their business including actively engaging to explore how our ecosystem of cloud accounting software and add-ons can add value to them as well as improve our efficiencies. 
• Have good awareness of the services offered by other departments in the firm and continually look for cross selling opportunities
• Help clients with technical queries, liaising with other internal teams, including VAT, corporate tax and other advisory teams.
• Have knowledge and ability to use various accounting software packages including Xero.
• Have knowledge of various accounting apps designed to simplify processes and deliver insight.
• Play a key role in supporting partners in all group sales and marketing activity, including leading client pitch teams, development of new business relationships, attendance at group networking, and other marketing events as appropriate
• People management responsibilities covering resource planning and allocation, performance management, training and recommendations for promotion. Act as a mentor to junior managers and provide coaching with a view to assisting them to achieve their personal career goals.
• Review the work of junior staff, and complete monthly reviews to ensure accurate financial information.
• Conduct rigorous project management and financial management on all projects, completing projects within agreed timescales and raising issues with the partner or client, as appropriate, in a timely manner. Managing recoveries and billings on portfolio
• Ensure that the firm’s risk management and quality control procedures are adhered to at all times.

We’ll help you succeed

When you join us, we’ll make your growth our priority. If you can demonstrate the following skills, we can help you go far. We’re looking for someone with:

• Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA or equivalent) or equivalent experience
• Strong financial reporting knowledge
• In depth knowledge of financial reporting and accounting functions
• Relevant experience of managing a team of staff is essential 
• Broad taxation knowledge complimented by commercial background is essential
• Excellent understanding of ecosystem of cloud accounting software and ad-ons and can articulate the purpose and value of appropriate systems to clients
• Understands the rules and regulations of doing business in the UK
• Good understanding of business controls and month/year end controls
• Excellent working knowledge of outsourcing and bookkeeping on a monthly basis.
• Working knowledge of risk management processes within an accounting firm
• Working knowledge of Microsoft packages including Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Competent in the use of Caseware or other relevant accounts production software

Personal Responsibilities:

• Keep up to date with all technical and commercial developments in order to ensure continued excellent delivery of services to the client.
• Excellent communication skills with an ability to deal with a wide mix of people, both internally and externally
• Excellent presentational skills
• Excellent analytical, problem solving and research skills
• Knows when to delegate and when to take personal responsibility
• Good team member who can encourage and support others at all levels
• Acknowledges and praises people for their effort and achievements
• Seeks regular feedback on own performance and acts on findings
• Undertakes difficult conversations when necessary
• Embraces change with an adaptable and flexible working attitude
• Able to think outside the box and bring prior experience to pragmatically provide solutions for clients.

We’re in it together

At BDO, we believe that when our people feel valued and rewarded, their potential is unlimited. We offer highly competitive starting salaries and review remuneration packages regularly to ensure that our pay always positively reflects performance. As well offering support with tuition and professional qualifications, we also provide the following benefits, as standard:

• 25 days’ holiday;
• access to a personal pension scheme, with matched employer contributions;
• life assurance cover;
• income protection insurance.

That’s not all. We understand that everyone is different so, we offer a range of voluntary benefits to suit every lifestyle. Our flexible benefits platform, Flexcel, means our people can choose from a range of tax efficient options to design a benefit package that best suits them. Through Flexcel, they can:

• buy up to ten days’ extra holiday;
• add on private medical, personal accident, dental insurance or travel insurance;
• enrol in our Bike to Work scheme;
• enjoy discounts off cinemas, dining, and gyms;
• receive an interest free season ticket loan or interest free graduate loan;
• access childcare vouchers;
• take an online health assessment and utilise our employee assistance programme.

Agile working at BDO (Workable)

• WORKABLE is our approach to making working at BDO work for everyone. It’s a framework – including policies, guidance, tools, resources, and support – that offers flexibility and choice around how, when and where we do our work. WORKABLE gives BDO people the freedom they need to be able to work at their best. Because sometimes, the hub is the best environment to get things done, and sometimes we’re more productive working from home: WORKABLE gives us that choice.
• We aim to offer you more choice and flexibility to plan around work and life, which can lead to improved wellbeing, access to more diverse projects and learning opportunities and increased job satisfaction.

We’re looking forward to the future

At BDO, we’re big enough to make the difference and collaborative enough to never lose sight of where we’re going. We know that it’s our people that make our success possible. Across our 17 UK locations, more than 6,000 of them work together to provide tax, audit, assurance and a range of advisory services that help our clients achieve their ambitious goals. Together, they’re fuelling Britain’s economic engine. Behind every complex client challenge and every untapped innovation, they’re there: ensuring we continue to find the right combination of global reach, integrity and expertise. That’s why we’re always looking for ways to invest in our people. That means providing them with an environment where they can grow, learn, laugh and feel respected, at all times.

For further information, and to apply, please visit our website via the “Apply” button below.