Senior Credit Control Clerk

Salary: - £25,742 to £26,444 with progression to £27,979 per annum
Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits . We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.
Closing Date: 24 March 2024
The Role
Newcastle University Finance Hub is a large team of skilled and experienced colleagues who manage the financial business activities of the University. We provide a professional and proactive service to our students, colleagues, and stakeholders. We are committed to supporting the personal and professional development of our team.
We are looking to appoint a Senior Credit Control Clerk to join our talented and supportive team.
We would love to hear from you if you are an excellent communicator who builds positive relationships with colleagues and stakeholders, while presenting high levels of customer service. You should have demonstrable experience of managing high volume workloads, prioritising your time to work with both integrity and initiative. With competence to deputise for the Credit Control Supervisor when on occasions required.
You will work within the guidelines of the University Credit Policy to pursue debt from primarily Research Customers and NHS Trusts. You will deputise for the Credit Control Supervisor in their absence. Much of the work involves communicating internally with Schools/Units and externally with customers on a daily basis whilst also presenting a high level of customer service.
This role is full time open ended, we are committed to building and maintaining a fair and inclusive working environment and we would be happy to discuss arrangements for flexible and/or blended/hybrid working.
Please reach out to Jannine Hunter to discuss this opportunity on jannine.hunter@newcastle.ac.uk
To apply please provide evidence of how you meet the essential criteria required for the role outlined in ‘The Person Specification’ by uploading a letter of application along with your application.
Key Accountabilities

• Supporting the Credit Control Supervisor with the day to day duties and monitoring of tasks. In addition to deputise for the Credit Control Supervisor in their absence ensuring that Credit Control procedures are adhered to
• Issue reminder notices, make phone calls and send e-mails for collection of overdue income and deal with any customer queries, providing detailed information regarding account transactions where required
• Create, maintain and monitor customer master data on the SAP financial management system, including carrying out credit checks as per the Credit Policy and sending warning emails of poor credit scores to those requesting customers. This also involves verifying VAT numbers
• Monitor and review accounts to ensure credit notes are appropriately raised and journals input in order that payments are correctly allocated and that bank charges and exchange rate differences are posted correctly
• Work with the Income Reconciliation Team to monitor un-invoiced income on customer accounts, liaising with customers to identify what it is in relation to, and to request from the relevant School/Unit that invoices are raised or refunds issued where necessary
• Contribute to resolving invoice queries in a timely manner by communicating with the originating School/Unit and Customer, and to maintain, update and monitor a debt query list
• Identify refunds due to customers and produce necessary documentation in accordance with the Income Section refund procedure to pass to the relevant person/s for authorisation
• Prepare reports and management information from the SAP financial management system, including the Aged Debt Report, unallocated cash report and query list
• Communicate with Principal Investigators of research projects, Heads of Schools/Units and Contract Financial Management to ensure that whilst income collection is paramount, important relationships are maintained concerning current and future sponsorship projects

The Person
Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Good interpersonal skills in order to communicate in a clear and concise manner with internal and external customers by e-mail, telephone and face to face
• Good IT literacy particularly in Microsoft Office (Excel, Word and Outlook) and the ability to design and compile report specifications using this
• Good level of literacy and numeracy in order to interpret and communicate financial data effectively
• The ability to work quickly and accurately to time to meet Finance Office deadlines
• The ability to organise workload and use initiative to prioritise tasks and make decisions
• Recent experience working within a finance team of a large organisation
• Recent experience in a debt recovery/Credit Control environment

Desirable

• Membership of the Institute of Credit Management
• Staff supervision experience

Attributes and Behaviour

• Understands the key aims of own area and how it relates to own job and responsibilities
• Thinking ahead to review processes
• Uses effective face to face communication in team meetings and briefings to inspire and motivate others
• Is factually correct and gives clear and concise support and advice to customers
• Implements tight controls for audit trails and accuracy

Qualifications

• Educated to a minimum of 5 GCSE grade 9-4 (A-C) or equivalent, including Mathematics and English or equivalent standard by experience

Newcastle University is a global University where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. As a University of Sanctuary, we aim to provide a welcoming place of safety for all, offering opportunities to people fleeing violence and persecution.
We are committed to being a fully inclusive university which actively recruits, supports and retains colleagues from all sectors of society. We value diversity as well as celebrate, support and thrive on the contributions of all of our employees and the communities they represent. We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams, we believe that success is built on having teams whose backgrounds and experiences reflect the diversity of our university and student population.
At Newcastle University we hold a silver Athena Swan award in recognition of our good employment practices for the advancement of gender equality. We also hold a Race Equality Charter Bronze award in recognition of our work towards tackling race inequality in higher education REC. We are a Disability Confident employer and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role as part of the offer and interview scheme.
In addition, we are a member of the Euraxess initiative supporting researchers in Europe.
Requisition ID: 26789
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