About the Company

Brompton is a highly respected British manufacturer of bespoke folding bikes, each bike being hand made in the London factory. For many owners of our bikes, Brompton is part of their lifestyle and an expression of who they are. We enjoy riding our bikes too and we’re proud of their success around the world.

Brompton wants to transform cities. By providing the means to commute or explore, with a bike that you can take anywhere, we can change the way people live in cities creating happier and healthier lives for our customers. Our high-quality products, combined with the resurgence in cycling, means that we are enjoying strong, sustained revenue growth of 20%+ over the past 3 years. COVID has accelerated the demand for cycling in cities around the world and lifted our ambition to grow global sales from c. £90m today to over £250m within the next 5 years.

We continue to make the Brompton in West London, where we started in 1975, but our product has travelled far - we now export 80% of our bicycles to 45 countries. In recent years we have invested in a new purpose-built production facility, transformed our digital architecture, opened new flagship stores, launched our ecommerce platform and had our biggest product launch in company history - and we’re not stopping there. To truly deliver on our purpose, we need passionate, innovative, and talented people that want to challenge the status quo and make an impact.

If you’re excited by the opportunity to sell market-leading products that make a difference to people’s lives, we can offer you a job you will not find anywhere else. 

The role

We are looking for someone to come in and ensure that the financial processes, controls, and reporting to our shareholder and external stakeholders is top notch. Working closely with the Head of Finance and the other members of the finance team as well as an external accounting provider, you will be responsible for ensuring that the finances of the business are accurate, timely, and done in a way that would make us proud.

The person

The occupant should be a perfectionist, who is capable of working in a specialist or technical area of expertise. The person in this role should be organised, thorough, enjoy challenging situations and have the persistence to see a job through to conclusion. Getting things right, attention to detail, ensuring quality and standards are met and reducing error to a minimum are important factors in this position. Researching and gathering facts, working with formulas and to specifications. The successful candidate will be a logical and systematic person, conventional, accurate, shrewd, methodical, dependable, self-starter, serious, probing, objective, self-reliant, and inquisitive by nature.

Competences required for the role should include the ability to:

• Evaluate situations, calculate and reduce risk, justify and defend correctness, give reasons for views and generally provide shrewd judgement in any situation.
• Consider problems as a challenge, collect information relevant to the problem, be disciplined in ascertaining the root cause, identify and develop a practical solution, communicate the findings and implement action to resolve the problem
• Search out errors, rectify omissions, perfect systems and procedures which will ultimately raise the quality and standards of all tasks undertaken.
• Provide practical advice and solutions to problems and ensure that tasks are followed through, loose ends are tied up and the job is completed.

Main duties

• Ensuring high quality financial processes and reporting – you will need to ensure that the processes in place across the business are fit for purpose and meet the requirements of the auditors and comply with ISO standard operating procedures. As the various parts of the business are in different states of maturity, these will necessarily look different and will need to adapt and evolve as those business units develop.
• Internal monthly reporting of the consolidated management accounts (Accounts Payable/ Accounts Receivable, P&L, etc.) – you will need to ensure that the accounting and treasury reporting from the local vendor is reliable and accurate and have a good understanding of the balances in the balance sheet and the risks / opportunities that exist.
• Ensure accurate data transfer into the company’s accounting system (Quickbooks)
• External reporting – Assist and check the reporting coming from the local vendor before submission to related authorities.
• Planning - you’ll assist with the preparation of the detailed consolidated 5 year business plan including budget.
• Direct tax – in conjunction with the tax advisors you will need to implement all necessary processes to meet our tax obligations across the group.
• Indirect tax – working with each local financial advisors, you will need to ensure that we are meeting all our local regulations and obligations in a timely and accurate manner. Including distance selling arrangements for the Ecommerce business unit, and local filings for subsidiaries.
• Thoroughly monitor payments from dealers and customers and implement necessary actions in case of delays in coordination with the Sales Manager.

Skills and Requirements

• Qualified Accountant.
• Strong experience of preparing consolidated financial statements.
• SQL and advance excel skills.
• Leadership skills to motivate others to complete a series of tasks, often according to a schedule.
• Interest in manufacturing or cycling and providing business support rather than just reporting the final numbers.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Background in multi-currency environment.
• Experience of managing stock and all forms of stock accounting.
• 1-3 years in a similar role or from practice.
• An advocate of quality, continual improvement and automation.
• Organised, with the ability to prioritise tasks, manage their own projects and allocate their time according to business objectives.
• Proactive and flexible approach; willing to contribute to the ongoing development of the business.