The Finance Manager South Asia will lead the Australia finance team with full responsibility for the financial stewardship of the accounting, financial operations and financial controls over the legal entities in Australia and New Zealand, including production of the financial reports, maintenance of the accounting records, controls and budgets in order to ensure that the reported results comply with company policies and international financial reporting standards.
The Financial Manager is the most senior finance person on site in Australia and, as such, is the interface with the Australia management team. The Finance Manager will have overall accountability for the integrity of group and statutory reporting for Australia and New Zealand, all financial and management reporting, ensuring accuracy and timeliness, and will work closely with the FP&A and Commercial Finance team, led out of Singapore under a matrix structure, to ensure strong communication with the business and strong financial analysis over programmes. As a Business Partner, this position will ensure appropriate business control and manage performance analysis against budgets / forecasts providing regular updates to the senior and local management and support commercial decision making through preparation of financials analysis on actuals performance, with forecasting and budgeting also forming part of this role. This role will also be responsible for managing local statutory accounts, local/income tax and VAT filing, other reporting requirements and cash management including dividend and intra group loan.
Duties & Responsibilities:
Accounting & Financial Operations:
- Financial reporting: Ownership and responsibility for all financial accounting and reporting for the South Asia business. Ensure timely & accurate month, interim and year end close activities for each entity in the South Asia region including Division/Group reporting and related disclosures. Responsible to clear aged balance sheet items on a timely basis, including but not limited to consistent reviews of program-related accounts. Ad hoc reporting such as Treasury (Bonds & Guarantees, Hedging, FX, and Cash Pooling), IFRS disclosures & analyses, Tax and Compliance. Ensure compliance with all internal accounting policies and all relevant external accounting standards.
- Business partnering: Understanding and reporting of financial information, including working capital, cashflows, order intake, revenues and margins; communication and presentation of the financial information to Smiths Detection management and stakeholders.
- Working capital: Drive working capital improvement (overdue reduction, inventory and AP).
- Management reporting: Produce timely and accurate monthly management reports for division and reports as needed locally to ensure functions are provided with quality navigation, forecasting and business planning tools and procedures that focus on decision making to maximise revenue, profit and cash and to enable cost centre analysis.
- Internal controls: Ensure adequate financial controls in place to protect company assets and IP, and that internal policies are followed. Oversee monthly balance sheet reconciliation process. Ensure the business is compliant with all Smiths Group & Smiths Detection policies and procedures, such as delegation of authority, expense procedures, capex applications, foreign exchange, etc. Comply with and promote all relevant legal requirements & Smiths policies and procedures, including business ethics, data protection and health & safety. Recommend improvements when appropriate. Monitor business control effectiveness and develop/execute improvement plans
- Audit: Primary responsibility for managing the Australia and New Zealand entities' relationship with external and internal auditors, and ensuring that the audits are completed on time.
- Risk management: Ensure that there is an effective risk management process in place to mitigate key problems and issues. Responsible for new customer and vendor credit controls. Responsible for ensuring strong control on credit and vendor management through annual credit limit review and vendor master date clean up etc.
- Statutory obligations including responsibility for indirect tax: Fulfil all statutory reporting & filing requirements for the two legal entities in the region including responsibility for annual statutory accounts and ensuring local tax compliance (GST, income tax, payroll tax, FBT etc).
Finance Team Management:
- Finance leadership: Role model with excellent people management, facilitation, and communication skills. Manage the annual performance review cycle and associated activities for direct reports according to internal policies and procedures.
- Talent development: Proactive talent coaching and succession planning, to ensure that the finance team develops the skills, experience and expertise to drive business forward and at the same time develop their career options within Smiths Group.
Banking and Treasury; Payroll and Other:
- Responsible for defining funding and hedging requests and ensure divisional treasury policies are followed.
- Ensure accurate monthly and weekly cash forecast.
- Responsibility for intra group loan and dividend working with division treasury team.
- Payroll approval for AU (fortnightly) and NZ (monthly).
- Support the organization in ad hoc projects (regulatory compliance, System improvement (SAP) & implementation of new tools, etc.
- Ensure accurate monthly and weekly cash forecast.
- Responsibility for intra group loan and dividend working with division treasury team.
- Payroll approval for AU (fortnightly) and NZ (monthly).
- Support the organization in ad hoc projects (regulatory compliance, System improvement (SAP) & implementation of new tools, etc.
