Senior Management Accountant

Beckenham, London

£60,000 - £70,000

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Department

Finance

Location

Beckenham

Hours

Full time Hours

Contract type

Permanent

Salary

£60,000 – £70,000

Senior Finance Business Partner – FP&A & Commercial Performance

Position Overview

Eclipse is seeking an experienced, commercially minded Senior Finance Business Partner to strengthen its financial planning, analysis and business performance capabilities.

Working closely with the Finance Director, CEO and senior leadership team, this role will play a key part in improving financial visibility, strengthening forecasting accuracy and supporting better commercial and operational decisions across the business.

The successful candidate will combine strong technical accounting knowledge with excellent analytical capabilities and a practical understanding of how businesses generate revenue, manage costs and protect profitability.

This is a hands-on role requiring someone who is equally comfortable building financial models, interrogating financial data, producing meaningful management information and working directly with operational and commercial teams.

We are looking for someone who does more than report the numbers. We need an individual who can explain what is driving performance, identify risks and opportunities, challenge assumptions and recommend practical actions to improve business results.

Key Responsibilities

Financial Planning, Budgeting & Forecasting

• Support and coordinate the annual budgeting process, working with department heads to develop robust and achievable financial plans.
• Develop and maintain detailed financial forecasts covering revenue, gross profit, operating expenditure and EBITDA.
• Produce regular rolling forecasts, identifying changes in business performance and their implications for future results.
• Build and maintain financial models to support business planning, scenario analysis and strategic decisions.
• Challenge assumptions within departmental budgets and forecasts to improve accuracy and accountability.
• Work closely with the Finance Director to ensure financial plans align with business objectives and wider group reporting requirements.

Financial Performance & Management Information

• Develop and deliver accurate, timely and insightful management information for the CEO, Finance Director and senior leadership team.
• Analyse actual performance against budgets, forecasts and prior periods, clearly explaining material variances.
• Identify trends, underlying performance drivers, emerging risks and opportunities for improvement.
• Develop and maintain financial and operational KPIs that provide meaningful visibility of business performance.
• Support weekly and monthly business performance reviews with clear analysis and recommendations.
• Improve the quality, accessibility and consistency of financial reporting across the business.
• Translate complex financial information into concise, actionable insights for non-financial stakeholders.

Commercial Finance & Profitability

• Analyse profitability across clients, projects, business areas and service lines.
• Work closely with the Commercial, Sales, Production and Operations teams to understand revenue, direct costs and gross margin performance.
• Support project-level financial analysis, including budget versus actual performance, cost overruns and margin erosion.
• Review pricing, commercial assumptions and cost structures to identify opportunities to improve profitability.
• Support financial evaluation of major client opportunities, tenders and commercial proposals.
• Monitor the performance of significant client accounts and commercial agreements.
• Provide financial insight into operational efficiency, resource utilisation and cost recovery.
• Constructively challenge commercial and operational decisions where financial performance or profitability may be at risk.

Cost Management & Operational Efficiency

• Develop greater visibility of the business's fixed and variable cost base.
• Analyse departmental expenditure, payroll-related costs, subcontractor expenditure and other significant operating costs.
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, cost control and financial accountability.
• Work with operational leaders to understand the financial implications of resource planning, staffing and operational capacity.
• Support business cases for investment, operational changes and process improvements.
• Monitor agreed cost-saving initiatives and report on progress against expected financial benefits.

Finance Business Partnering

• Build strong working relationships with the CEO, Finance Director and senior leadership team.
• Act as a trusted financial partner to departmental leaders, providing insight and constructive challenge.
• Help non-financial managers understand their financial performance, budgets and commercial responsibilities.
• Support decision-making with clear financial analysis, practical recommendations and scenario modelling.
• Proactively identify financial risks and opportunities, rather than waiting for reporting deadlines.
• Work collaboratively across the business to improve financial understanding, ownership and accountability.

Financial Systems, Reporting & Process Improvement

• Improve financial reporting processes, reducing manual activity and increasing the reliability and timeliness of information.
• Develop effective reporting tools, dashboards and financial models.
• Work with existing finance and operational systems to improve data quality, integration and reporting capability.
• Identify opportunities to automate repetitive reporting and analytical tasks.
• Support the Finance Director with the continued development of finance processes, controls and management reporting.
• Ensure financial analysis is based on consistent, accurate and clearly understood data.

Month-End & Wider Finance Support

• Support the Finance Director and finance team with month-end management reporting, variance analysis and performance commentary.
• Help ensure management information reconciles to the underlying financial records.
• Provide additional analytical support during budgeting, forecasting, year-end and other key reporting periods.
• Assist with financial analysis and reporting required by the wider Encore group.
• Contribute to wider finance projects and business improvement initiatives as required.

Qualifications & Experience

Essential

• Fully qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA or CIMA), or equivalent substantial relevant experience.
• Significant experience in financial planning and analysis, management accounting or commercial finance.
• Proven experience of developing budgets, forecasts, financial models and management reporting.
• Advanced Excel skills, including the ability to build and maintain detailed financial models.
• Strong understanding of P&L performance, gross margin, EBITDA and cost drivers.
• Experience working directly with operational and commercial stakeholders.
• Ability to identify financial issues, explain their underlying causes and recommend corrective actions.
• Strong communication and presentation skills, including the ability to influence senior stakeholders.
• A proactive, inquisitive and commercially focused approach to financial management.

Desirable

• Experience within live events, technical production, AV, creative services, project-based businesses or similar operational environments.
• Experience analysing project profitability, labour costs, equipment utilisation and subcontractor expenditure.
• Experience with Power BI or similar business intelligence and reporting tools.
• Experience improving financial systems, reporting automation and data integration.
• Exposure to group reporting and working within a larger international organisation.
• Experience supporting operational transformation, integration or business improvement programmes.

Key Competencies

• Commercial Acumen: Understands the relationship between operational decisions, commercial performance and profitability.
• Analytical Thinking: Can interrogate complex information, identify trends and explain the underlying drivers of financial performance.
• Constructive Challenge: Has the confidence and credibility to question assumptions and challenge decisions professionally.
• Communication & Influence: Can translate financial analysis into clear, practical recommendations for both financial and non-financial audiences.
• Ownership & Accountability: Takes responsibility for delivering accurate, timely and meaningful financial information.
• Continuous Improvement: Actively looks for better ways to analyse information, improve processes and strengthen financial visibility.
• Collaboration: Builds positive working relationships and supports a culture of shared accountability.
• Adaptability: Comfortable working in a fast-moving environment where business priorities and operational demands can change quickly.

What Success Looks Like

• Within the first six months, the successful candidate will have:
• Improved the consistency, accuracy and usefulness of financial forecasting.
• Established clearer reporting on revenue, gross margin, operating costs and EBITDA.
• Developed stronger visibility of profitability across projects, clients and business areas.
• Built effective working relationships with commercial and operational leaders.
• Identified tangible opportunities to improve profitability and cost management.
• Reduced the manual effort involved in preparing management information.
• Enabled the Finance Director and CEO to make faster, better-informed decisions through clearer financial analysis.

The Person We're Looking For

• We are looking for someone who is naturally curious about business performance and motivated by understanding what sits behind the numbers.
• You will be comfortable working with large volumes of data, identifying inconsistencies, asking difficult questions and turning financial information into meaningful commercial insight.
• You should be confident enough to challenge senior colleagues, but pragmatic and collaborative in your approach.
• Above all, you will take ownership, bring solutions rather than simply highlighting problems, and enjoy working closely with the wider business to improve performance.