Finance Manager / Financial Accountant (Charity)

Finance Manager / Financial Accountant (Charity) – GWT
Full-time or Part-time (28 hours)

Join Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust (GWT) and use your finance skills to support nature’s recovery across Gloucestershire. We’re looking for an experienced Finance Manager / Financial Accountant to lead the day-to-day running of our finance function. This is a hands-on role overseeing transactional finance and payroll, strengthening financial controls, and improving board reporting — with line management responsibility for two Finance Officers.

If you enjoy bringing order, clarity and momentum to finance operations — and want your work to directly support conservation impact — we’d love to hear from you.

What you’ll be doing

• Overseeing day-to-day finance operations (AP/AR, credit control, banking, journals, payment runs, month-end routines)

• Owning and maintaining cashflow forecasts (weekly/monthly), highlighting risks and actions early

• Overseeing payroll end-to-end, including reconciliations, pensions, HMRC compliance and year-end tasks

• Leading monthly close and key balance sheet reconciliations, ensuring an audit-ready trail

• Maintaining and improving board reporting packs with strong version control and reconciliation to source data

• Supporting good restricted/unrestricted fund controls and applying charity finance compliance in routine reporting

• Working confidently with finance systems and improving processes, templates and documentation (including Xledger and Access CRM)

• Line-managing and coaching two Finance Officers, ensuring deadlines and quality standards are consistently met

What we’re looking for

Essential:

• Significant hands-on finance experience with charity experience essential

• Strong experience in cashflow forecasting

• Experience building/improving board reporting packs and senior-level reporting

• Payroll oversight experience (processing, pensions, HMRC, reconciliations)

• Excellent attention to detail, deadline management, and people skills

• Confidence picking up and working with less familiar systems (e.g., Xledger, Access CRM)

• Strong Excel skills

• Qualified-by-experience welcome (degree not required)

Desirable:

• Payroll qualification (e.g., CIPP Foundation/Practitioner or equivalent)

• VAT experience, ideally including Partial Exemption

• Experience in a multi-entity environment (e.g., charity + trading subsidiary)

• AAT/ACCA/CIMA/CIPFA part-qualified or qualified

Benefits

• Permanent role

• Full-time or part-time (28 hours) considered

• 25 days annual leave (pro rata for part-time)

• We are closed between Christmas and New Year, giving additional time off during this period

If you’re motivated by strong processes, great teamwork, and purpose-led work, we’d love to hear from you.