Financial Planning & Control Section Manager - UK

At Honda we embrace inclusion in our various policies, so whilst our contracts state that the hours are as required to fulfil the role with a minimum of 35 hours per week, we offer flexibility for when you work.  The regular office hours are 08:00 – 16:00 Monday to Thursday with a half hour lunch break & 08:00 – 13:00 on a Friday.  However, we offer flexibility of when you work with our daily flex-time start of between 07:00 and 11:00 providing that there is no business requirement.
 

Whilst there is no contractual right to work from home, the flexibility we offer is that you can request to work from home 2 days per week, again providing there is no business requirement to attend the office.

Role: 
This role sits within the Honda Motor Europe (HME) Finance European Financial Planning & Control (FP&C) team. The team is responsible for the preparation and analysis of monthly results, financial control within European branches, top-level coordination of all budgeting and forecasting (short and long term), plus general commercial finance decision support to the European business. The team will contribute to implementing and monitoring standardised finance activities across all branches in areas such as financial control, accounts preparation, budgeting, analytics and reporting.

The role is ideal for a qualified accountant looking to add value whilst driving key process improvements in a fast-paced European finance team.  

Main Responsibilities:

Accounting Close & Analysis

Contribute to ensuring HME-UK entity maintains accurate books and records using current standard accounting practice. The role will be responsible for several of the below activities. Specifics could change from time to time due to rotation of tasks, but the overall purpose of the role will remain the same.

• Manage month end timetables and ensure clear communication of all deadlines.
• Review results (including Revenue, COS, Inventory and SG&A) to ensure they are reported accurately and all necessary quality checks are in place.
• Ensure all provisions are reported accurately and are aligned with latest accounting guidance.
• Ensure all sub ledgers are reported accurately and closed in a timely manner.
• Provide necessary approvals for manual entries created by other team members.
• Provide necessary reviews/and or approvals for a selection of balance sheet substantiation activities, ensuring a high level of understanding for all balances.
• Ensure all improvement and follow up activities are completed in a timely manner.
• Complete pre-close P&L reviews with local SMG, if required.
• Provide valuable and timely performance analysis, insight and reporting to senior stakeholders. Understand division results within branch (e.g. costs, margins, profit by customer) and recommend improvement opportunities. This includes Balance Sheet.
• Ensure key business performance risks, issues and opportunities are highlighted, interpreting financial results to enable the business to make key decisions and achieve targets.
• Responsibility for SOx control compliance that relate to analysis and reporting. 
• Understand root causes of issues and propose recommendations to improve performance and control. 
• Support preparation of monthly Profit Change Analysis to divisions, as required.
• Support business reviews with HME divisions, as required
  Support line manager with any tasks as requested by them.

Collaboration with Shared Service Centre (SSC)

• Work with relevant Shared service centre teams to ensure accurate and timely input of all relevant month end close activities.
• Work alongside SSC on task optimisation (most efficient way to perform tasks and establishing which team are best to perform the task).
• Monitor KPIs to ensure service is within agreed levels.  Work closely with Shared Service teams to address concerns and drive improvements to processes.

Process Support and Improvement

• Drive ongoing issue resolution and process improvement within the month end close processes.
• Provide key expertise to European finance improvement initiatives as required.

Data Quality 

• Drive improvements in data quality to enhance reporting and improve month end processes.  
• Act as the SME to ensure the data quality impact of any system changes is understood and addressed.

Governance and Compliance

• Ensure adherence to current Governance and Compliance frameworks, ensuring all relevant processes are up to date, compliant and documented. 
• Work closely with Group Finance to understand and address impact of future changes.  

Budgeting and Forecasting 

• Assist central FP&A team, who will coordinate budget events for the region from a Finance perspective, supporting them locally as required. 
• Potentially support business teams in preparation of their budgets, as directed by line manager, e.g. guidance on accounting treatments and items below.
• Ensure cost allocation methods are accurate and in line with central guidance. 
• Review budgets for quality (phasing, granularity etc.). Challenge assumptions where appropriate.
• Identify root causes of previous budget variances to improve forecasting accuracy.
• Support central section of FP&A team to enhance financial understanding and exert greater budget control, e.g. by the wider roll-out of activity-based budgeting, risks and opportunities trackers etc.
• Support Department Manager with reporting, as required.

Relationship Management

• Work closely with internal and external stakeholders as a recognised Finance process expert.

Management of the FP&C Specialist

• Motivate, develop and manage the FP&C Specialist for UK 
• Work in conjunction with the other FP&C Managers and Head of FP&C to share best practice ideas and ensure a standardised approach where possible

Other

• To work on any ad hoc Projects as requested by Finance management.
• To support other Finance teams as required, specifically where team members are based elsewhere and require local presence to support UK branch. 

Qualifications, skills and experience: 
Required

• A technically able qualified accountant with experience of a financial control environment.
• IFRS accounting knowledge essential.
• Experience of managing activities provided by a finance shared service provider.
• Experience of working in a multi-cultural environment with the ability to adapt to and communicate in differing cultures to achieve standardised business solutions.
• Excellent communication & networking skills. Quickly able to establish credibility with stakeholders.
• Self-driven and motivated to succeed with the ability to prioritise workload to tight deadlines.
• Audit, SOx, risk management and compliance experience.
• Ability to demonstrate methodical and systematic workload management.
• Ability to work with multiple stakeholders, recognising different needs.

Desirable

• Experience with the following system would be advantageous: Trintech Cadency, Hyperion, SAP S4Hana, BOFC.

Honda is committed to the principle of equal opportunity in the workplace for all employees, temporary workers, contractors, applicants and visitors. Honda also encourages respect for the individual differences and talents of others while making full use of one's own abilities, based on Honda's philosophy of respect for the individual.

At Honda, we value and celebrate diversity and are committed to being a fair, non-discriminatory company that promotes and welcomes the uniqueness and differences of people around the world. We recognise that a diverse workforce allows for different ideas and perspectives, and we encourage everyone to share them. We strive to foster a culture of belonging that is consistent with Honda's core values and lived out in the way we work and respect each other. For us at Honda, diversifying our workforce means increasing its overall strength by providing people with equal opportunities - regardless of personal characteristics or previous careers.

This commitment flows directly from the Honda philosophy and the belief that we are all working towards a common goal. Honda recruits, hires, trains and promotes the most qualified/experienced individuals at all levels without regard to race, origin, religion or belief, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or any other protected characteristic.