Finance Analyst Apprentice (Sika Ltd)

Role Overview

Your role will be assisting with the daily tasks that keep the finance team functioning, such as producing business-critical financial reports and posting journals. You will also have the opportunity to work on significant projects, such as incorporating acquisitions into our function.

What You'll Do at Work

You will join an apprenticeship scheme that will work in a rotation around the three main teams within the finance function. The role will give you a well-rounded, hands-on finance experience while you obtain your CIMA qualifications. Each rotation comes with exciting challenges and new learnings.

The Three Teams

1. Controlling: Experience in management accounting tasks such as budgeting, forecasting, product costings, financial analysis, sales reporting, cost controls, capex approval controls, and stock analysis.
2. Financial Accounting: Grounding on the fundamentals of accounting and the regulatory environment. Tasks include posting journals, administering the IFRS16 calculation, VAT returns, accruals, statutory account preparation, maintaining the fixed asset register, and assisting with audit inquiries.
3. Pricing: The commercial aspect of finance. Tasks include analysis of price changes on sales, mix analysis, low margin reporting, quote pricing administration, e-shop management, pricing reviews, and elasticity analysis.

Within the scheme, you will have a single line manager for discussing your own development and guiding you through blending your practical work experience with your CIMA studies.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Costing analysis and reporting
• Financial Reporting
• Assisting with statutory reporting
• Assisting with the month-end closure
• Price effect calculations
• Pricing controls

Where You'll Work

Watchmead
Welwyn Garden City
Herts
AL7 1BQ

Training Details

Apprenticeships include time away from working for specialist training. You’ll study to gain professional knowledge and skills.

Training Provider

BPP Professional Education Limited

Training Course

Professional accounting technician (level 4)

Course Contents

• Collate and analyse financial information, and show how that information can be used most effectively to support value creation within an organisation.
• Apply accounting principles and adhere to legislation to ensure records are accurate and compliant with law or company policy when delivering accounting activities, such as the financial accounting of single entities, limited companies or partnerships or management accounting activities for an organisation.
• Apply professional scepticism when undertaking accounting activities to inform and evaluate decision-making on the content of true and fair accounts, being alert to conditions that may indicate possible misstatement of financial information due to error or fraud, establishing the facts sensitively and being aware of unconscious bias.
• Interpret financial information for accounting purposes, such as using judgement to determine the correct way to report or account for transactions or undertaking ratio analysis.
• Participate in or support others with quality improvement activities, for example, the improvement of personal working practices.
• Use software packages to assist with accounting tasks in line with cyber and data security requirements, using data securely and safely, including backing up data.
• Deliver accounting tasks with a critical eye to transactions and trends, demonstrating a ‘right first time approach’.
• Use workload management principles to plan, organise and prioritise own tasks, and manage time effectively.
• Use accounting information to add value to the organisation through use of data visualisations, analysis and interpretation, and communicate financial information in a way that facilitates understanding for non-finance stakeholders.
• Communicate accounting information through a variety of media to enable key stakeholders to understand what is required, considering the risks and benefits to the organisation of social media and other digital applications.
• Build and maintain collaborative, professional relationships with internal and external stakeholders to deliver accounting tasks, recognising the importance of equality, diversity, and inclusion.