Trainee accountant

This is a 1-year, fixed-term Trainee Accountant role for a self-motivated graduate or school leaver looking to kickstart their finance career by supporting the NHS finance team at Brighton General Hospital across accounts payable, payroll, and financial reporting.

Job summary

Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust is looking for a new Trainee Accountant. You will be working with the Trust and its subsidiary Sussex Primary Care Ltd to support the finance team in a variety of functions while gaining valuable experience of working within a finance team.

The role is fixed term for 1 year and would suit a new or recent graduate or school leaver with a good record of educational achievement. You will be looking to begin a career in finance and will have aspirations towards starting professional accountancy qualifications.

You will be joining our finance team based at Brighton General Hospital, where you will find a supportive team that aspires to be a great place to work.

Main duties of the job

• Provide accounting support within the Finance Department, particularly in the areas of accounts payable, payroll and monthly financial reporting

• Assist in providing efficient and high quality financial support to service managers and the wider organisation.

• Provide excellent customer service to colleagues as well as to clients and suppliers external to the Trust

About us

We are the main provider of NHS community services across East and West Sussex, with 6,000 staff serving 1.3 million people. We deliver essential care to adults and children, helping them manage their health, avoid hospital admissions, and reduce hospital stays.

Our Trust vision is to provide excellent care at the heart of the community. We offer opportunities across medical, clinical, support, and corporate services.

Why work for us?

Positive 2024 NHS Staff Survey results, highlighting compassionate leadership and wellbeingo Varied environments: community hospitals, patients' homes, and bases across Sussexo Flexible working options: part-time, flexi-time, annualised hours, and flexi-retiremento Excellent training, development, and research opportunitieso Accredited Living Wage Employer, we ensure fair pay for all our staffo Cost-effective workplace nurseries in Crawley, Hove, and Brightono Active EMBRACE, Disability & Wellbeing, LGBTQIA+, and Religion & Belief networkso Level 3 Disability Confident Leader and Veteran Aware Trust

Our values--Compassionate Care, Working Together, Achieving Ambitions, Delivering Excellence--guide everything we do.

We embrace diversity and encourage applications from all backgrounds, particularly from ethnically diverse, disabled, and LGBTQIA+ individuals. We aim to create an inclusive environment and support reasonable adjustments during recruitment.

Job description

Job responsibilities

• Accounts payable - To prepare and reconcile invoices for payment. To manage the relationships with services and suppliers and help ensire prompt payment.

• Accounts receivable - To assist in ensuring that the sales ledger is maintained to a good standard and to maximise debt recovery

• Monthly and annual accounts - support the finance team in monthly closedown and reporting procedures

• Payroll - to support the smooth operation of the payroll service, assisting the Payroll Gatekeeper in resolving queries

Qualifications / education

Essential

• Good record of educational achievement (eg degree or A level)

Desirable

• Must be willing to study for professional accountancy qualifications

Experience

Essential

• Experience of having worked within a team environment to achieve a common objective.

• Experience of delivering a significant project within agreed time frames using a variety of complex data sources.

• Experience of investigating and resolving complex problems or discrepancies on own initiative.

• Experience of planning and managing own workload to meet weekly, monthly and annual deadlines, and ability to prioritise and manage conflicting deadlines

Skills

Essential

• Excellent IT skills, including the ability to manipulate complex financial data in Excel, as well as ability to use Word and Access.

• Knowledge of using a variety of IT systems.

• Understanding of the role of the NHS and a desire to pursue a career in this sector.

• Excellent written and oral communication skills with the ability to convey financial information to finance and non finance staff, with authority and clarity.

• Excellent numerical skills

• Ability to handle sensitive or contentious information in a professional manner, in order to achieve correct outcome.

• Ability to act on own initiative.

• Ability to develop and maintain good working relations with internal managers and external agencies.

• Ability to deliver accurate work to tight deadlines and to multi-task.

• Ability to work in and contribute to the success of a team.

• Confident and assertive in dealing with people, both on telephone / Teams and in person

Other Requirement

Essential

• Self-motivated and Innovative.

• Flexible and adaptable approach to work.