Finance Operations Manager

The V&A is looking for a highly motivated, dynamic and experienced Finance Operations Manager to join the finance team. You will have proven strong people management skills with experience of effectively managing small diverse teams; be a qualified or part-qualified accountant with a strong understanding of accounting principles and VAT; and have excellent communication and presentation skills, both verbal and written.

Context

The Finance team are responsible for ensuring that all of the V&A’s activities are underpinned by appropriate financial processes, reporting, insight and analysis; that we comply with our legal and regulatory obligations; and that the V&A operates in a way that is financially sustainable over the long term. As the V&A’s footprint in East London grows with the reimagining of the Museum of Childhood and the opening of new sites in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the Finance team needs to continue to evolve to support the new family of museums. The V&A is also in the process of designing and implementing a new finance system (Business Central); this launched for V&A Enterprises, the trading subsidiary, in April 2023 and is due to launch for the V&A Museum in April 2025.

Main Purpose of Job

To supervise and be responsible for a high-performing Finance Operations team, providing accounts payable, accounts receivable and cash office services to all V&A sites. To ensure excellent customer service is delivered at all times and oversee the delivery of training and communication to ensure policies and processes are well-understood by the wider business.

Working closely with the Financial Reporting Manager and Financial Planning & Analysis team, to support the V&A’s Strategic Plan by seeking continuous improvement across their area of responsibility and responding effectively to all new initiatives at the V&A, ensuring financial processing needs are met and new areas of income and expenditure are captured appropriately.

Key Responsibilities – Team Management:

• To lead, manage and motivate a high-performing team delivering a Finance Operations service to all Museum sites and other V&A entities. This includes agreeing team and individual objectives, performance monitoring and management, and staff development and succession planning.
• To supervise and be accountable for the work of the Accounts Payable Team, the Accounts Receivable Officer, Credit Controller and the Cash Office Manager ensuring that suppliers are paid promptly and accurately, that customers are invoiced, debts chased on a timely basis, and cash is managed across all V&A sites.
• Support the delivery of a new finance system (Business Central), which has already been implemented for V&A Enterprises, the trading subsidiary, across the V&A Museum. This includes leading the Finance Operations Team through a period of significant change, ensuring new processes are robust, efficient, adopted in a consistent way by relevant teams and are well documented.
• To report KPIs/SLAs, and monitor performance against these to ensure a consistently high level of service is maintained.
• To drive continuous improvement and seek further efficiencies in the work of the team.
• To ensure a sound control environment, with all reconciliations completed on a timely basis, and all discrepancies followed up on.
• Ensure all users of the V&A’s finance systems’ P2P functionality receive appropriate training to enable them to fulfil their responsibilities.
• To work closely with stakeholders across the business to ensure processes remain fit-for-purpose, and new initiatives are well supported.
• To ensure Finance Operations processes are well-understood by the wider organisation, taking responsibility for all relevant information on the intranet and for other communications as necessary.
• To drive a customer service mentality across all areas of the team.

Key Responsibilities – Specific Tasks

Further details of key responsibilities relating to specific tasks can be found within the job description.

The museum offers a hybrid way of working, with 60% minimum on site working.