Assistant Accountant

Requirements of the role

We have an opportunity for a Assistant Accountant to join our Finance Team within Corporate Enablers Directorate.

We are Ofwat, the Water Services Regulation Authority, a non-ministerial government department responsible for regulating the water sector in England and Wales.

We are at the source of everyday life. We help the sector build trust and confidence with customers, the environment and wider society: keeping water flowing, ensuring water bills don’t cost a penny more than needed, holding water companies to account. We push hard to improve day-to-day water company performance for customers, including on leakage, sewer flooding and customer service.

Our work is high-profile and fast-moving, within a dynamic and agile environment. The work that you’ll be involved in every day will help us to deliver our strategy, to make us the regulator we want to be and help the sector to deliver for customers and society.

You can find out more about why you should join Ofwat, our strategy, values and our framework for success in the attached Information for Candidates Pack.

Job description
The Role

We are seeking a skilled and detail-oriented finance professional to join our Finance team as an Assistant Accountant.

The Assistant Accountant role is varied and involves providing essential support in financial operations and assisting in the effective management of financial resources. This role will report into the Financial Accountant and will work with other team members to ensure accuracy, compliance, and transparency in financial activities.

As an Assistant Accountant, you will predominantly support the financial control and accounting functions including purchase ledger; sales ledger; capital and fixed assets; staff expenses; reconciliations; VAT and tax; government data returns; maintenance of the Oracle finance system; internal and external audit; and the production of the Annual Report & Accounts. You will also develop collaborative relationships with key stakeholders e.g. Finance Business Partners, Internal and External Auditors, and HM Treasury.

This opportunity will be particularly interesting to candidates with an interest in government and public sector accounting.

Key deliverables:

In this role you will be expected to:

Provide support to the accounts payable and accounts receivable functions including audit of employee expense claims
Support completion of month end closedown activities e.g. opening/closing accounting periods, preparing prepayment journals and other ad hoc journals
Prepare monthly accounts payable and receivable reconciliations and other control account reconciliations, e.g. monthly balance sheet reconciliations
Maintain the asset register and the leases model and prepare monthly asset and lease reconciliations
Maintain the licence fee income models and calculate and prepare the respective sales invoices
Prepare the monthly VAT returns and annual Tax returns
Prepare statutory returns and transparency returns for publication
Support maintenance of the Oracle finance system
Support the preparation of the financial statements and associated documentation required for audit
Provide documentation to internal and external auditors and working with them to resolve queries during the audit
Support the preparation of the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) and the Main and Supplementary Estimates
Support the analysis of current processes to identify and implement ways to improve processes and financial control
Support the maintenance and compliance of finance policies
Complete other ad hoc tasks to support the Financial Accountant

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