Our advice for early-stage founders is to build a relationship with a specialist accountant sooner than you think you need to. Having someone to turn to for clarification and guidance is genuinely valuable when you’re making those early decisions — about structure, about tax, about how to pay yourself. But when you’re bootstrapping, you want […]
Title: Apprentice Client Finance Assistant
Hours: Semi-Flexible / 37.5 hrs per week
Salary: £20,000
About you
We’re looking for an Apprentice Client Finance Assistant to join our small but growing team. As our client base grows significantly, you’ll have the skills and character to wow our clients with impeccable delivery.
The right person will be:
- Curious
- Organised
- An adopter of new technologies
- Systems savvy
- With impeccable stakeholder management skills
Company description
Thrive is a technology-led accounting business that provides our clients with a full finance function service. Based in East Grinstead, with a London client base we are best known for our commitment to a purpose beyond profit. We are signatories to the Million Tree Pledge and a certified B Corp, striving to achieve a goal beyond profit.
Using the Xero accounting system as the core platform and a range of complementary productivity tools, we work with start-up and scale-up businesses in the technology industry. Our services cover everything that our clients would need form both an in-house team and an external accountant. From routine tax filings to forecasting & analytics, fin-ops and carbon accounting.
The sole director, an experienced finance director, set up Thrive to offer an alternative to the commoditised and often disappointing compliance-only service provided to small businesses.
Thrive’s clients think of us as a proactive, value-adding business advisor and outsourced finance function – providing near real-time financial reporting and analysis made possible by a modern, cloud-based suite of tools.
Job description
One day per week will be dedicated to on the job training with us and off the job training with an external training provider, studying towards your AAT Level 2 qualification. The other four days will be working as a Client Finance Assistant (CFA). Our CFAs ensure that we do what we say and keep our commitments to each other and our clients. They provide consistent delivery and free up our Client Managers to fulfil their roles, giving them time to focus on the needs of our clients and the overall quality of our work.
- Working across a portfolio of our forward-thinking clients, the CFA will be responsible for daily bookkeeping updates to various Xero accounts, using Dext Prepare for efficiency and Dext Precision for accuracy.
- Every week, the CFA will collate and send queries to each client as required and will be a crucial point of contact and representative of Thrive.
- Alongside bookkeeping responsibilities, and in line with our full finance function service, certain clients have bespoke requirements that include payment run preparation, e-commerce imports and reconciliation, general sales ledger, and purchase ledger updates.
With the variety of responsibilities across a diverse client base and with a focus on utilising the leading and latest software, this is an ideal role for someone considering their first role in finance and accounting.
Client Communications
Prompt replies to client enquiries are critical. Poor responsiveness from their existing accountant is the main reason prospective clients give when they seek us out.
- We need to be better and stay better as we grow. There is nothing more important to us than looking after our clients, whatever the challenges.
- Much of our interaction is via email, so you’ll have good writing skills in order to convey our professionalism, competence and trustworthiness. Personality in the way you write is great! Typos are not great.
How an in-house role works
Given the nature of the role and the cloud-based tools that we use, there can be flexibility on how the working week is structured. Whilst this isn’t a home-based role, there is scope for home-working on occasion. Similarly, working hours will be structured, but can be agreed to fit around other life commitments such as school hours and even reduced hours during school holidays.