Accounts Payable Accounts Assistant

About the role:

This role delivers Accounts Payable processes efficiently and effectively to month-end and payment deadlines, ensuring the highest standards of quality, accuracy and integrity for all entries to vendor, publisher, contractor and employee accounts. You'll accurately process supplier invoices, resolve supplier and internal queries, and escalate significant financial impact issues to your manager, or the relevant operational site or supplier.

What you’ll be doing:

Invoice Processing & Matching

• Support high-volume daily processing of invoices via Purchase Order or coding, taking responsibility for the timely and accurate processing of supplier invoices, credit notes, employee expenses and other authorised transactions into the Accounts Payable ledger.

• Process daily against supplies and claims recorded by operational sites using invoice matching, and post invoice matching discrepancies to the General Ledger via the invoice matching system.

• Check the accuracy of retail price, VAT, cost discount, handling allowance and supply/claim quantities on stock invoices, raising pricing, VAT and claim queries in line with defined processes.

• Ensure OCR invoice capture and auto-matching works optimally for your regularly used suppliers.

• Act as a multi-skilled processor, able to support any Accounts Payable transaction — including payment runs, manual payments and Concur Expense/Travel — for two or more supplier types (contractor, vendor, employee, publisher).

Supplier & Query Management

• Resolve supplier queries in a professional and timely manner, communicating with suppliers regarding payments and liaising with managers for invoice authorisation.

• Complete monthly reconciliation of supplier statements and checks.

• Respond to queries directed through the shared mailbox and supplier portal.

Payments & Month-End Support

• Process weekly payment runs and other payment runs throughout the month, including ad-hoc manual payments as required.

• Support month-end balance sheet reconciliation and KPI reporting and analysis, owning your allocated outputs.

• Complete other day-to-day tasks as delegated by your manager — for example filing, opening mail, monitoring the shared email inbox, and supplier statement checks.

• Use SAP, SAP Concur, Excel and OCR tools (Kofax ReadSoft Verify, SAP Kofax Process Director) daily, including pivot tables and VLOOKUPs.

Customer & Communication

• Articulate financial matters clearly to internal and external customers, and raise account-related queries with vendors via email, telephone or shared systems.

• Build sound working relationships with other departments and external suppliers, working well both individually and as part of a wider team.

• Participate in regular review meetings to ensure service standards are maintained and improved.

• Communicate clearly to customers and key internal contacts by phone and email, ensuring all correspondence is checked for accuracy.

• Support stock audits as required, including occasional travel and overnight stays, typically two to three occasions per year.

What we need from you:

We’re looking for people who are ready for a fast paced environment, get their kicks out of problem solving and can balance getting today's stuff done, whilst building for the future. We’re looking for people with drive and natural curiosity – who want to do things differently. And do them brilliantly.

Qualifications & Experience

• Experience in a high-volume invoice processing or Accounts Payable environment, or equivalent relevant experience.

• Confident using Microsoft Office, particularly Word and Excel; experience with SAP, SAP Concur or OCR tools is an advantage.

• Experience managing multiple tasks and prioritising a busy workload.

Skills & Competencies

• Proactive in your own development, keen to expand your knowledge and continuously improve your skills.

• A strong team player who also works well individually, building sound relationships across departments and with external suppliers.

• Excellent attention to detail and a high level of accuracy in data entry and processing.

• Clear, professional communicator, comfortable liaising with suppliers and internal stakeholders.