Our Newcastle office is currently recruiting for an Accounts Payable Assistant (12 month FTC) to join one of the largest finance teams in the North East. The team comprises over 60 finance professionals divided into several specialised teams that support financial operations across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (EMEA).

The Role

The role sits within our Finance Department in Newcastle, reporting to the UK Accounts Payable Team Lead.  The role is in a team that provides support to the accounts payable function for the UK covering a range of finance and administration related tasks to ensure invoices and payments are processed in a timely, accurate manner and that Norton Rose Fulbright LLP complies with all statutory and regulatory requirements.  The firm uses SAP as its ERP solution and will utilise Emburse Enterprise software to handle the workflow of invoices and expenses.  The team also provide Accounts Payable support and best practice options to the wider EMEA region.

Key responsibilities

• Reviewing and actioning requests for new UK vendor set ups and changes to vendor data, ensuring full authenticity checks are made in line with compliance requirements (including Bribery Act 2010, Money Laundering, Sanctions).  Passing reviewed requests to the global team for action in SAP and monitoring/chasing outstanding requests
• Reviewing UK  expense report submissions from the business, ensure correct receipting, expense type selection, VAT treatments are applied and that expenses are claimed in line with UK policy.  Liaising with the business and the EMEA Emburse Enterprise support teams as required
• Reviewing UK non-chargeable invoices ensuring correct vendor selection, invoice types, codings and VAT treatments are applied.  Liaising with the business and the EMEA Emburse Enterprise support teams as required
• Managing the journal and soft cost upload processes – receiving data for recharges, ensuring any corresponding invoices are processed, reformatting the data to enable uploads into SAP.  Managing exception items, ensuring that material costs are correctly processed and assisting Finance Business partners and revenue controllers with any queries in relation to postings
• Inbox management – responsible for reviewing and actioning emails sent to the UK AP inboxes (expenses, invoices and consultants), including the routing of invoices to approvers as required, reconciling key vendor and ad hoc statements that may be received and following up on outstanding items and dealing with all other queries in a timely manner via the team pending report
• Reviewing ad hoc payment requests (submitted via the internal Fin15 form) and spreadsheet requests for upload to the firm’s HSBCnet platform, ensuring appropriate payment methods and treatments are applied
• Providing support to and liaising with the payment team on payment requests and timings, outstanding bank reconciliation items
• Other ad hoc tasks as may be required

Key Skills and experience

• Able to work as part of team, sharing knowledge and ideas with peers, proactive and working towards shared goals
• Keen sense of responsibility, ability to set a professional example and ensure the team commits to and delivers to defined scope and timeframes
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate in a professional, approachable manner at all levels, and to non-Finance professionals, both verbally and in writing.
• Able to follow standard operating procedures whilst being able to exercise good judgement and decision making when presented with anomalies and non-standard requests
• Comfortable working within a fast-paced, flexible environment supporting Finance and the business in the completion of objectives
• Knowledge of SAP, Emburse Enterprise or other invoice/expense workflow solution useful
• Able to use Microsoft Office suite (Excel, Word and Outlook)

• Experience of a professional services environment useful but not essential