Assistant Partnership Accountant

The Department

The Partnership & Tax team is responsible for the partners’ financial and tax affairs, as well as maintaining the firm’s international financial structure and administering the firm’s tax lodgings.

The Role

The role will be varied and include:

• Calculation and or review of partners monthly drawings.
• Ad-hoc partner payments.
• Review of partner “Joiner / Leaver” checklist and partners database
• Posting  ad-hoc and year-end journals to Elite 3E practice management system.
• Supervising the maintenance and updating various interlinking spreadsheets relating to partners’ records and remuneration.
• Analysing partner data with available systems and producing ad hoc reports to senior management.
• Creating new spreadsheets for reporting and efficiencies.
• Assist with development of other team members.
• Deal with partners, management team and international branch accountant on queries.
• Help develop and implement new policies in partnership finance team.
• Development of new spreadsheets for partner finance function.
• Cover for partner finance assistant and partner finance manager.
• Reconciliation and analysis of individual partners’ current, capital and tax suspense accounts.
• Preparing year-end partner financial statements.
• Various year-end partners tax calculations.

Monthly duties:

• Review and sign-off of worldwide reconciliation and payment schedule submission from international branches.
• Manage the partner drawings process and reconciliations in London
• Assist with International Drawings Process – including regular reconciliations and queries.
• Assist with management of international branch accountants on processes, policies and accounting for partner transactions, including assisting with GL enquiries and reporting from Elite 3E.
• Running monthly reports on partners’ performance data for circulation and to use for calculating payments due to partners.
• Payment of partners’ pension releases and other ad hoc payments to partners.
• Maintain, setup and review of worldwide partner information on Elite 3E.
• Run reports and check consultants’ keys payment terms against reports and provide reports to management for approval, including setting up bespoke calculations for different terms.
• Reconciliation of partners’ capital.
• Deal with partner and management team queries.
• Assistant with ad hoc information requests from other areas of the firm.
• Assistant with the review of general tasks completed by partner finance assistant.

Other duties:

• Assist in the preparation of undrawn profit distributions payment schedules.
• Assist in the preparation of FSP bonus payment schedules.
• Post, administer and reconcile partners’ tax payments.
• Maintain and update partners’ remuneration spreadsheets.
• Assist with process of partner capital subscriptions.
• Prepare annual analysis of partners tax suspense accounts.
• Assisting with the preparation of various worldwide year-end partner calculations.
• Assisting with reconciliation of annual partners current account.
• Assisting with preparation of partner financial statements at year-end.
• Assisting with preparation of reporting on partner balances for financial account team and auditing.
• Creating year-end financial journals for uploading onto Elite 3E.
• Liaising with international branch accountants on queries and providing process instructions.
• Maintain large number of interlinked spreadsheet in an accurate and efficient manner.
• Use different information sources for analytical purposes and provide information in a user-friendly manner to end recipient.
• Assist with calculation of partner tax reserves and reconciliation of reserves versus actual at year-end.
• Develop and improve processes for more efficiencies.
• Other ad hoc duties relating to partners and partnership accounting as required.

Key Skills & Experience Required

• Experience in partner remuneration, distribution of drawings, and tax ideal
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Excel and Word.  Advanced Excel ideal, ie. Macros, nested IF statements, Pivot Tables, complex formulae
• VBA skills advantageous
• Experience in using different legal software, ie Elite 3E, Aderant
• Understanding double entry accounting
• Able to read and analyse General Ledger Transactions
• Understanding accounting terminology
• Excellent attention to detail
• Excellent communication skills – both verbal and written
• Good organisational skills with the ability to prioritise conflicting demands
• Fast learner who is able to adapt
• Able to self manage and understand the need to ask questions when required
• Strong team player who understands team goals and expectations

Additional Information

Kindly note that this job description is not contractual.  It will be reviewed periodically and may be amended or altered to meet the needs of the firm.

HFW aims to ensure equality of opportunity and we are actively working towards improving the diversity of our staff.  All applications will be considered only on merit and the applicant’s suitability to meet the requirements of the role.

HFW collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants to manage its recruitment process.  The firm is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.  For information on how the firm will process your data, please see our Privacy Notice on our website (www.hfw.com/Privacy-Notice), in the section “What we collect and how we use it”.