Payroll & Finance Specialist(Ftc)

Role: Payroll & Finance Specialist
Contract: 6 month Fixed Term with possible extension
Location: London
Salary: c£53,000 pro rata

Introduction

The Finance and Procurement Team provides a full range of finance and procurement services to the NAO. The wider Finance team consists of some 14 people and is organised into four main areas: the financial reporting team, financial management team, central procurement team and payroll team, all managed by the Financial Controller and overseen by the Finance Director. The team manages NAO’s gross expenditure of about £120m, of which payroll is about £80m and other expenditure (including outsourcing, travel and other central costs) is £40m. The NAO also earns and raises income of approximately £30m. 

This role will be responsible for:

• Managing NAO’s outsourced payroll service to ensure accurate and timely payment of approximately 1000 NAO employees, HMRC, Pension Providers and third parties.  
• Supporting financial management including managing NAO cash forecast and management, supporting the management accounts process, quarterly VAT returns, preparing and approving reconciliations, and supporting month-end and year-end processes. 

Reporting to: Head of Financial Management. 

Internal relationships: Finance Colleagues, HR colleagues, internal auditors and other NAO colleagues. 

External relationships: third party payroll provide, HMRC, Pension Providers, third party recipients for staff voluntary deductions, External Auditors

Responsibilities:

Payroll (40%)
Monthly payroll

• First stage sign-off of monthly payroll including: Reviewing and checking the accuracy of the payroll processed by outsourced payroll provider; Ensuring that all processing errors are corrected, and only accurate payments are made to staff. 
• Uploading and posting payroll costs journal and invoices to the GL including the reconciliation of the payroll control accounts on a monthly basis i.e. net pay, statutory deduction and third-party deduction
• Hold / attend monthly meetings with third party provider for payroll briefing, issues log, accuracy meeting, service review meeting and other relevant meetings.
• Provide the financial forecast of the staffing information provided by HR.
• Reviewing and signing off payroll reconciliations prepared by trainees including: Housing Loan, Season Ticket Loan, Rental deposit Loan, Salary Advances, Salary Sacrifice etc.
• Responding to employee queries on payroll. 
• Manage and update the system on third party payroll provider’s contract performance (KPIs).

Annual Payroll processes and contract management (10%)

• Liaising with payroll provider to ensure the P11D and P60 processes are completed to statutory deadline and the relevant information is provided to HMRC and NAO staff.   
• Liaising with payroll provider to ensure the year end pension processes are completed to statutory deadline and the relevant information is provided to MyCSP. 
• Agree annual processing timetable with third party provider. 
• Prepare annual timetable for internal meeting related to payroll and management accounts. 

Cash Management (10%)

• Monitor and forecast cash requirements and calculate drawdown from the Consolidated Fund, and identify when supplementary drawdown will be required.

General Finance Support (40%)

• Prepare quarterly VAT and annual adjustment calculation and liaise with relevant firm to submit VAT return on HMRC website to the statutory deadline.  
• Pay VAT due to HMRC to the statutory deadline.
• Support the monthly financial reporting and financial management process including forecast of central budgets and preparing analysis and investigating variances. 
• Working with internal and external auditors and responding to relevant requests or queries.   
• Working on ad-hoc tasks and projects assigned.

Please note this is not an exhausted list or indicative percentage of time to be spent on each function.

Skills Required:

• A recognised professional payroll qualification e.g. Diploma in Payroll Management
• Knowledge of taxation legislation including rules on benefits and year end processes.
• Understanding of pension processes and experience of liaising with pension providers. 
• Strong interpersonal, customer relations and team working skills – the role involves providing advice and responding to queries from colleagues across the Office. It also involves collaboration with colleagues from HR, Finance, and Digital Services.
• Effective communicator and negotiator in dealing with MHR the payroll provider, MyCSP and other external stakeholders.  
• Ability to work to a high degree of accuracy and analyse detailed data to identify errors/discrepancies.
• Strong Microsoft Office skills including Excel to advanced level and Word to intermediate level.
• Highly organised and able to work under own initiative; able to work to tight deadlines.