Finance Manager
Career information and advice on being a Finance Manager

A Finance Manager is responsible for providing financial advice and support to clients and colleagues to enable them to make sound business decisions. These decisions are based on accounting and/or strong finance knowledge and training and typically include an analysis of equity, gearing, cash-flow, budgets and future prospects of the finance or investment decision being made.

The environment within which these decisions are arrived vary enormously as does the beneficiary to whome the advice is provided.

Your Functions May include

The roles of Finance Managers vary significantly. The job title is wide-ranging and all encompassing and therefore should be checked carefully as the level and scope of the responsibilities involved can differ enormously. In larger companies, the role is more concerned with strategic, commercial or corporate analysis, while in a smaller organisations a Finance Manager could mean a bookkeeper or junior accountant.

Typical activities include:

• financial and managerial accounting: managing a company's financial accounting and reporting systems
• cashflow: daily managment and report preparation, forecasting and projections formulating strategic and long-term business plans
• researching and reporting on factors influencing business performance
• finance: develop financial management tools that measure operational and financial risk
• External and internal auditors: liaising with auditors 
• manage external contacts:- Company Solicitors, Bankers, HMRC and Companies House
• arranging new sources of finance for a company's debt facilities
• keeping abreast of changes in financial legislation, reporting standards and statutory legislation