Organisation: Melville Senior High School
Job Title: Finance Officer
Word Limit: Three Page Limit
Location: Melville Senior High School
Demonstrated financial management skills, with the ability to interpret and apply financial and accounting practices and procedures
I have worked as both an assistant accountant and accountant working as a team and independently, developing my organisational skills prioritising my workload, even on very short notice in order to get the job done. For example, during my tenure at LandCorp I assisted in the preparation of BAS returns, prepared month end, provided valuable assistance with balance sheet reconciliations, preparation of bank guarantees, maintaining and conducting supplier audits, assisted and processing the submission of TIMS and the timely prep and delivery of statutory financial statements and annual reporting requirements
To illustrate the above, I prepared the month end production and, as part of my month end process, was assisting in forecasting whereby I ran reports on actuals over budget by extracting the information from a different Excel spreadsheet into the Oracle system. I then upload the actuals results onto the Oracle interface. This is a tedious process but by using a checklist system I was able to ensure that everything was done smoothly and with minimal errors and I managed to shorten the month end process on my part from 4 to 3 days. In recognition of my timeliness, I was given the task to compile and analyse on sales and development expenditures for the month, a task usually handled by the Senior Management and Financial Accountants themselves. I was also given the responsibility of managing the bank guarantees we have. By using a self-checklist system, I was able to ensure there was sufficient credit limit to allow more projects to go ahead and this way I managed to close 1.6 million dollars’ worth of bank guarantees outstanding in a span of 3 months
Another example is while at St John of God Hospital, when doing the Fixed Assets reconciliations, I investigated and found that the Accounts Payable team had mistakenly coded an asset of another colleague’s division into of my division’s account. I first ran a general ledger report from the Oracle system and ran an invoice inquiry on the asset. After determining and examining that the asset was supposed to be coded to another division, I then did another final check to see if any adjustment journals were done to correct the mistake. Since the mistake was not picked up, I then alerted this issue to the lead of that particular division and to my Finance Manager and proposed and prepared a journal to transfer the asset back to the rightful division. While I was assisting the Senior Financial Accountant with the running of actuals over budget for forecasting purposes monthly I took the initiative to write some procedure notes for this and was commended for my notes on the procedure’s reducing the time required while ensuring accurate reporting was effected.
Demonstrated well developed organisational skills, including the ability to work with minimum supervision, identify priorities and meet deadlines
I am well organised and use checklists to organise my day ensuring that all duties and activities for the day are completed before I leave for the day. For example at LandCorp I successfully completed processing my division’s month end one day ahead of schedule (having only had 4 day turnaround) This was a result of my planning and requesting information from various stakeholders ahead of schedule and preparing a list of actions to be taken by a certain deadline. I was commended for this by the Finance Manager and Senior Finance Manager.
I have also had the opportunity to develop my organisational skills and to prioritise my workload, even on very short notice. For example, at St John of God I supported a colleague by completing his division’s fixed assets which was required within the next 24 hours. I started by listing out the tasks and compiling information required to complete the work in order of urgency. I then started requesting and collating information I needed to complete the work. As a result of my strong organisational skills and ability to prioritise, I was able to successfully complete the task for my colleague on time. My efforts and dedication were recognised and I was commended by the Divisional Lead.
Demonstrated well developed verbal, written and interpersonal communication skills with the ability to build and maintain effective working relationships and liaise with individuals at all levels
My background as an accountant from both public and commercial sectors required me to liaise with all levels of staff, management, and other stakeholders such as the ATO, tax clients and auditors.
I had on numerous occasions provided support and liaising on variety of accounting matters including GST. At one time, whilst working in tax, I had a client who was uncooperative when requesting tax information from him. I politely asked him what was the reason he was upset and I found out that he was unhappy with the level of service he was getting from the administrative division of the organisation. I quickly apologised to him on behalf of the company and negotiated to complete his tax done ahead of intended schedule, despite being in a separate team from the administrative team. Throughout the whole situation, I was calm and professional even when he was being difficult. In the end, the client stayed on with the company and I was commended for the level of professionalism shown to him.
I was also selected to project manage the transition of a new software in Ballast which required me to liaise and develop relationships with external stakeholders of the organization. Having worked as an accountant in both public and commercial settings, I have always been comfortable working in a team environment. At LandCorp, I was a Financial Accountant working directly under the Senior Financial Accountant. Besides working under the Senior Financial Accountant, there were numerous occasions as well when I had to step in to assist various members in the finance team. For example, I offered and assisted the Senior Budgeting Accountant in inputting information into the Budgeting system for the Treasury Information Management System (TIMS) when I noticed he was struggling with his workload.
I also assisted the Finance Manager of the finance division in critiquing the yearly financial statements and liaising with the auditors as well as the internal marketing department on the layout of the financial statements before releasing the financial statements to the public. This led to me correcting and picking up on several details that were not picked up by the auditors despite us employing them to go through our statements before publishing to the public and led to me being commended for my attention to details. I also took the initiative to provide informal training to the newcomer in our finance team even though I was not asked to do so.
Demonstrated well developed computer skills including the ability to create, operate, extract reports and manipulate databases, spreadsheets and systems
I am also experienced using a very diverse range of financial and office software applications. For example I am well versed in MS Excel skills (Pivot table, V-lookups), BGL SimpleFund, Sage HandiSoft, IBA Financial, SUN System, ,Banklink, Webpas, Oracle, Clarity and am very quick to pick up and understand financial and office based systems. My role required me to generate various reports for the preparation of monthly journals and uploading them into the system. For example, in order to accrue for pharmacy accruals, I would then extract a report from another system called WEBPAS in St John of God and calculate the number of days to accrue, journalized the entries and upload them into the Oracle system. General ledger reports from Oracle are also used as means of investigating items and to review what was uploaded had also been entered accurately. I’ve also had a good grounding and exposure using Oracle Fixed Assets and the system used to run invoice inquiries, creditors information and account lines to analyse data. Microsoft Excel and spreadsheets are used frequently in a daily manner.
It has always been my principle to document and present my work in a clear and concise manner. Pivot tables and clear spreadsheets are both effective because they successfully summarise information for another accountant, with no prior knowledge to what I was doing, to understand my work quickly and easily. An example would be creating pivot tables which were used to extract data to enable me to analyse large amount of data efficiently by allowing me to drill on individual employees in a certain division in a fast and effective manner whilst doing payroll reconciliations. Spreadsheets which contained formulas or hyperlinks to the source documents were also created to maintain schedules such as prepayment and grant schedules.
I was managing and allocating the amount of land taxes to the relevant projects to be accrued on a monthly basis under the AASB 137 which is in line with the Provisions, Contingent Liabilities and Contingent Assets, using the assessment given by the Office of State Revenue such as by dividing the total estimate land taxes, rates and charges by 12 months. As LandCorp is a government agency, it is exempt from local government rates but it is still required to pay a Local Government Rate Equivalent (LGRE). It was during this tenure I discovered there was a very complex and time consuming method of calculating the land tax accruals and prepayment. I designed and implemented a spreadsheet to calculate the land tax and determine which journal this information should be recorded and also if it was an accrual or prepayment. I was highly commended for this simple and easy to use time saving spreadsheet and it is still in use today by LandCorp.
Also successfully modified and constructed a new template to calculate the percentage of fees to pay to LandLease per lot sales based on sales reports given by them and checking it with the reports we have in our land system.
Demonstrated well developed conceptual, analytical and problem solving skills with the ability to apply innovative thinking in problem solving
I can demonstrate the application of innovating thinking and solving problems that arise. For example during my tenure at LandCorp, I was responsible for ensuring information regarding sales and development expenditure were collected each month from various Business Development Managers (BDMs) in order to assist the Finance Manager in preparation for the organization’s board reports. In one particular month, I noted a commentary from one of the BDMs did not match with the sales figures we have compiled during month end. The figures we had were lower than the commentary he quoted. Before verifying with the BDM again, I sought to check with the previous months’ reports to the Board and found that sales for that particular region was down according to the previous BDMs due to lower economic activity and has not increased in recent times. I then confirmed this information with the BDM who admitted he had mistakenly read the figures as he was new in that role and had no previous experience providing commentaries to the finance team. I then proceeded to explain to him on how to interpret the financial data I had sent in order for him to gain a better understanding of the figures we had derived and to avoid similar confusion in the future.
During my work with LandCorp while assisting the Finance Director, despite not being exposed to preparation of annual report in the past, I was quick to pick up financial errors in the draft report even though it had been sent to an external audit firm for a quality check on the financial records prior to being issued to the public.
I realised the auditors failed to correct an error where under Note 5 Inventories- the net realisable value of the previous year was not the same as the annual report in the previous year. After drilling down to the issue, I then spotted the error, due to a matching issue in previous tab in the spreadsheet where the information was picked from. I immediately highlighted this error and drilled into the worksheets that comprised this calculation and realised the worksheets were incorrectly calculated and consequently was not transferred to the future years correctly. I raised this issue to the Finance Manager who then thanked me for picking critical error up along with other punctuation errors that failed to capture the auditor’s attention.
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