Senior Manager Finance & Accounts

Designation: Senior Manager Finance & Accounts

Department: Finance & Accounts

Industry: Manufacturing / Engineering

Qualification

• Chartered Accountant (CA) preferred; or CMA / equivalent professional qualification with strong relevant experience.

Experience

• Approximately 10-15 years of relevant Finance & Accounts experience.
• At least 3-5 years in a managerial/team leadership role.
• Experience in a manufacturing or engineering organisation strongly preferred.

Role Purpose
The Senior Manager Finance & Accounts will be responsible for managing the day-to-day finance and accounting function, ensuring strong financial controls, accurate and timely reporting, statutory compliance, effective working capital management, and disciplined financial processes.
The role requires a hands-on finance professional and strong people manager who takes ownership, anticipates issues before they escalate, and remains calm and solution-oriented while handling financial, operational, compliance, or business-critical situations.

Key Responsibilities :

1. Financial Accounting & Reporting

• Lead monthly, quarterly, and annual closure of accounts.
• Ensure accuracy and integrity of the General Ledger, Trial Balance, Profit & Loss Account, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement.
• Review reconciliations, provisions, accruals, fixed assets and other accounting schedules.
• Ensure timely preparation of monthly MIS and management reports.
• Analyze actual performance against budgets, forecasts and previous periods.
• Identify unusual trends, variances and financial risks and initiate corrective action.

2. Working Capital & Cash Flow Management

• Closely monitor receivables, payables and inventory from a working-capital perspective.
• Prepare and monitor short-term and medium-term cash-flow forecasts.
• Work with Sales, Purchase, Stores and Operations to improve collections, inventory utilization and payment planning.
• Ensure optimal utilization of available funds and banking limits.
• Proactively flag potential cash-flow constraints and recommend appropriate action.

3. Budgeting & Financial Planning

• Coordinate preparation of annual budgets and periodic forecasts.
• Work with functional heads to develop realistic operating and capital expenditure budgets.
• Monitor budget utilization and investigate significant deviations.
• Support management with financial analysis for business decisions.

4. Costing & Manufacturing Finance

• Monitor product costs, material consumption, overheads and manufacturing expenses.
• Review inventory valuation, slow/non-moving inventory and provisions.
• Analyze gross margins and product/customer profitability.
• Work closely with Production, Purchase, Stores, Sales and R&D to identify opportunities for cost optimization and margin improvement.

5. Taxation & Statutory Compliance

• Ensure timely and accurate compliance with GST, TDS, Income Tax and other applicable statutory requirements.
• Coordinate tax assessments, notices and submissions with consultants.
• Maintain appropriate documentation and compliance calendars.
• Keep abreast of regulatory changes affecting the organisation.

6. Audit & Internal Controls

• Coordinate statutory, internal, tax and other audits.
• Ensure timely closure of audit observations.
• Strengthen financial SOPs, maker-checker controls and approval processes.
• Identify control gaps and implement preventive and corrective measures.
• Promote a strong culture of financial discipline and accountability.

7. Banking & Treasury

• Manage routine banking relationships and documentation.
• Monitor working-capital facilities, bank guarantees, letters of credit and other banking instruments.
• Ensure timely renewals and compliance with banking requirements.
• Monitor surplus funds and support management in treasury decisions in accordance with approved policies.

8. ERP & Process Improvement

• Ensure financial transactions are accurately captured through the ERP.
• Improve integration between Finance, Purchase, Inventory, Production, Sales and Dispatch processes.
• Identify opportunities for automation and reduction of manual processes.
• Strengthen data quality and management reporting.

9. Team Leadership

• Lead, mentor and develop the Finance & Accounts team.
• Clearly define responsibilities, timelines and accountability.
• Review team performance and build capabilities within the department.
• Encourage team members to identify problems and propose solutions rather than merely escalate issues.
• Build adequate backups for critical finance activities.

10. Crisis & Problem Management
The incumbent must demonstrate a strong ability to respond effectively to unexpected situations, including:

• Cash-flow pressures
• Delayed customer collections
• Banking or funding issues
• Statutory notices or compliance concerns
• Audit observations
• ERP/accounting disruptions
• Major reconciliation discrepancies
• Urgent management information requirements

The role is expected to assess the situation quickly, establish facts, evaluate financial and compliance implications, develop solutions, escalate appropriately and drive issues through to closure.