Company Description
Sycamore specializes in providing finance and operational transformation services to owner-managed and investor-led SMEs, along with offering a fractional Finance Director (FD) service. Our mission is to help clients achieve their growth goals by enabling businesses to better understand their performance and make informed decisions. By deeply understanding our clients' unique journeys, challenges, and goals, we deliver tailored solutions. Sycamore is built on fostering trust and delivering outcomes that focus on results, ensuring a lasting impact for our clients.
To support their 2026 growth plan and deliver on their growing range of services to clients, they are looking to increase the size of the client delivery team.
Role Overview
Sycamore accounting are seeking a well-rounded Client Finance Manager to join their team in West Yorkshire.
This is a fantastic opportunity for a self-motivated and innovative candidate to join a consultancy at the early stages, where you will be able to gain a variety of experiences in a client environment and have an open door to your ideas.
This is a role that will spend time working closely with client teams either on site at their locations in and near West Yorkshire or remotely.
The role will work closely with the director of Sycamore Accounting, to implement wider finance projects and longer-term strategic client objectives.
There will also be scope to work with the Director of Sycamore Accounting to build out the consultancy service offering as the business grows.
There are two fundamental aspects to the client facing role, one which is about 'Managing The Details' and a second which is about 'Insights for Decisions'.
'Managing The Details':
The ideal candidate will have spent time at the 'coal face' understanding the inner details of how the profit and loss, and balance sheet work, so this is second nature to you.
Getting things right first time, and ensuring data is well managed, is a driver for success in the role, as this underpins other value adding activities such as forecasting & performance reporting.
Dealing with processes that need fixing, or creating from scratch, is no bother to you, and you enjoy implementing your ideas. You are able to contribute to wider finance projects such as setting up a client's accounting packages.
As such, you will obsess about good data and creating solid processes that ensure the integrity of data is maintained.
You will therefore be confident taking ownership of a set of client accounts and bringing them to a timely and accurate close in a month end routine, in line with relevant accounting standards.
Example duties:
·
Bookkeeping using client accounting packages
· VAT returns & HMRC reconciliations
· Working to a month end timetable
· Management accounts
· Balance sheet reconciliations
· Cleaning, transforming, maintaining, and connecting data points in excel
· Populating/ refreshing reports
· Perform process improvement on client finance processes to improve productivity/ scalability.
· Work with client staff to perform the above duties and obtain relevant information to perform the role successfully.
· Working with client external stakeholders (their customers/ suppliers)
'Insights for Decisions':
You know that good data and processes mean you can stand behind the numbers in your reports and communication with senior stakeholders.
Having spent time 'in the weeds' with the data, you know what does or doesn't look right, and you can turn your hand to an impactful set of insights that lead client stakeholders to make real and impactful decisions for their businesses.
This can be using your Power BI skills to set up and automate insights, or you are equally handy in excel and other Microsoft tools to pull together analysis to support new avenues for decisions.
Having worked with business stakeholders of varying seniority before, you waste no time in forming new relationships and building confidence in you and the numbers.
Your level of experience gives you a reasonable level of business and commercial acumen, that you can draw on to make decisions, and challenge current topics succinctly.
Example Duties:
·
Stakeholder management & relationship building
· Monthly financial reporting packs & commentary
· Financial budgeting, forecasting, & modelling (FP&A type tasks)
· Cashflow reporting & forecasting
· Creating and automating reports using reporting tools (Power BI)
· Presentations to client board & senior stakeholders
· Own and manage project workstreams on behalf of clients
Essential Requirements
Accounting qualification – CIMA/ ACCA/ ACA
Knowledge of accounting packages (Xero (preferred)/ Sage/ Quickbooks)
Strong technical accounting knowledge
Extensive experience creating Power BI reporting & dashboards & writing queries
Strong attention to detail
Meticulous and efficient approach to managing and transforming data
Competent advanced excel user (power query/ formulas)
Process and system driven
Ability to work independently under own direction
Ability to build relationships either remotely or in person
Confident with communicating to stakeholders at varying seniority in a business
Dedicated to achieving high quality standards
Non Essential - Desirable Attributes
Previous experience in a customer facing role
Knowledge of large ERP systems
Knowledge of Microsoft tools such as Dynamics
Data analyst skillset including SQL and Python
Project management experience
Motor Repair / Insurance sector experience