Harmonic Finance™

Harmonic Finance are proud to be leading the retained search to secure the next Finance Manager for one of the UK’s fast growth production and post-production companies. The position has been newly-created in order to support continued growth plans for 2022 and beyond.

The client

Our client are a film production and commercials company based in central London who are currently using a hybrid work model which they are looking to keep in place over the next year at least. They produce adverts, and shorts as well matching brands with talent through their talent arm. They believe in an audience- first approach and creating content that drives emotional connections they are truly passionate about filmmaking and impactful narrative. The business also take pride in exclusively managing a great talent roster of directors and producers which gives them a fantastic ‘USP’ over many of their competitors.

There are currently thirteen full-time employees, with dozens of freelancers supporting on a production-by-production basis. As a company they are looking to improve head count significantly over the next 12 months as well growing the company turnover by circa 100% in the next 3 years.

The Role

Reporting directly into the Founders and the Financial Director, who works for the business one day a week. This role offers a unique opportunity to have control of a broad range of financial duties as well as having the remit to influence the future strategic direction of the business.

Although your immediate focus will be upon ensuring that ‘business-as-usual’ Finance is shipshape and scalable, the role would best suit an individual with a keen intellect and an eye for operational process improvement within a close-knit creative environment. The company showreel and talent roster is world-class, and with a fast-growing TV & Film development arm the Founders are keen to invest in the Finance function to improve their levels of commercial insight into the business. The aim is to keep financial and operational processes slick and efficient in order to free-up creative colleagues to focus upon what they are best at.

The Finance Manager will maintain over-arching responsibility for the annual company budget, commercial forecasting and process implementation. You will have a real passion for the more commercial and data-driven aspects of accounting is therefore essential. As is the ability to communicate financial insights in a simple, jargon free manner!

Core duties will include:

• Production of monthly management accounts and associated commentary.
• Supporting the Finance Director with working capital management via delivery of cash flow forecasts.
• Overall responsibility for delivering an efficient Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable function in a high-volume transactional environment.
• Financial Planning & Analysis (including margin analysis and creation of KPI dashboards).
• Regular communication with Talent, Producers and Creatives to ensure that the Finance department is a key part of company decision-making (as opposed to being ‘back-office’).
• Delivery of weekly and monthly payroll (identify any shoot payments that need to be processed and run weekly payroll on Sage).
• Raising and sending out customer invoices as well as liaising with new customers to gather information needed to set them up on the internal system.

Company Culture & Ethos

The business prides itself upon having a welcoming, close-knit company culture, centred around their love for production and creativity. All of the team have a deep passion and understanding of the Commercials and TV & Film industry and so – while Commercials experience isn’t a pre-requisite- an appreciation of the creative arts in a broad sense is essential.

In usual (i.e. non-plague) times, the company has an active company social scene centred around the pubs of Fitzrovia and Soho and various other and events. Flexible working is welcomed, although one day out of the three would need to be worked on the Friday to ensure that you are

What we need to see (Essential)

• Strong commercial project accounting experience within a Creative Agency or Events Production (TV, Film, Advertising, Digital Marketing, Music) environment.
• At least 3 years industry experience in a Finance Manager position.
• Experience of working within an owner-managed business environment.
• An aptitude for process improvement and automation.
• A genuine passion for the creative industries.
• Experience of overseeing payroll approvals.

What we’d like to see (Non-Essential)

• Qualified ACA / ACCA / CIMA.
• Production Accounting experience for TV & Film, Commercials or similar.
• Experience of using Sage.
• Experience of working in a small finance team
• Advanced Excel.
• Any experience of implementing data visualization solutions would be of real benefit.
• Undergraduate degree at 2:1 or above.

Salary

£50-£55k pro rata

Working week

3 days

Interview process

• 1 x interviews with Shianne Curtis (Harmonic Finance)
• 1 x video interview with Founders and Finance Directors
• 1 x financial task

Harmonic Finance™