Client Manager Job Ad

SUPERHERO.

WANTED.

Must be good with numbers

CLIENT MANAGER

ABOUT CREATE

What We Do

We believe that awesome, thriving, independent small businesses have the power to create better lives, better communities, a better society and a better planet.

Our purpose is to support small business owners by enabling them to create a business that delivers them more cash, more free time, and more enjoyment. Which together we call ‘more life’.

We’re an accountancy business, whose mission is to be way more than ‘just accountants’. We want to partner with small business owners, and be their ‘CloudCFO’.

‘Wtf is a CloudCFO!?’... A new breed of accountant built for the 2020s.

Imagine having a virtual Finance Director or ‘co-pilot’ for your small business, who’s alongside you for every step of the journey. Someone who can bring together their top-notch skills with numbers, add a structured approach to running & growing your business, and look after your entire financial world….

That’s what we do.

And we believe that every small business owner should have the opportunity to work with an accountant that can deliver that service.

How we work

We are a digital accountancy business, born in the cloud, and living in the future.

By leveraging technology, offshoring and agility - we can deliver amazing value to our clients by delivering the benefits you’d get from an in-house finance team, but at a much lower cost.

We offer a high level of autonomy to all of our team members, underpinned by a high level of trust in each other.

Our company is designed & built to run virtually, though we recently took up residence in our first physical office space which allows the UK team to collaborate more effectively.

Working hours are flexible provided internal and client meetings are attended at the scheduled times.

Our team can do most of our work from anywhere in the world that has access to electricity and an internet connection, and currently spans the UK, the Philippines, and the USA.

ABOUT THE.
OPPORTUNITY.

The Role

We want to offer you the opportunity to work for our small-but-awesome company as our second-ever Client Manager.

Your main area of responsibility will be looking after a group of our clients - and be responsible for helping them achieve their personal ambitions through their businesses.

Whether that’s increasing the amount of cash they earn, reducing the hours they need to spend at work, or removing the stress of financial admin - you will be using your super-powers with numbers, people and technology to guide them on their journey to enjoying ‘more life’.

You’ll be a superhero in their eyes, because you’ll be making a profound difference to their quality of life, giving you oodles of job satisfaction and a clear purpose in your professional life,

You will ultimately be using your knowledge and skills to do immense good for your community, wider society, and the planet - by helping local independent small businesses to thrive.

We’re looking for an Ownership-Taker-in-Chief and catalyst for GSD that can keep the cogs of our internal processes running smoothly, like a well-oiled machine.

The Team

You’ll be the human interface between the clients and our back-of-house Operations Team based in the Philippines. They’re the ones who will be supporting you with a full-stack support function to do all the heavy-lifting, and helping you to prepare accurate real-time data, valuable insights, and quality reports on our clients' financial wellbeing.

Think of them as being your in-house finance team - comprising a Finance Manager, Bookkeeper, and Payroll Team. All trained-up and on hand to help make your job, and your life, a breeze.

You'll be supported by and reporting into our Senior Client Manager - Luke. He's a qualified accountant with a wealth of experience, and all-around top guy to boot!

He joined us as our first UK team member back in April 2022, and has forged a path through our training and onboarding process so you'll be able to follow in his wake.

The Training

Training will be given in how to leverage the technology that is currently disrupting the profession, enabling us to deliver huge amounts of value to our clients without tons of legwork.

You’ll be given the opportunity to exercise your soft skills in listening, communication, and empathy - as well as your core technical abilities - to get the job done in the most effective way.

We’ll also power-up your soft skills in coaching, selling, and communicating with clients - which will be super-transferable to pretty much any future role that you choose to move on to, and for to many other facets of life in general

The Growth

You’ll be our second UK-based hire, and will be helping out our first hire Luke to by taking on client-management duties for a selection of the businesses we work with.

We believe in continuous evolution and improvement. Your role will be adapting and evolving as you progress, so we can be pretty certain that you won’t get bored doing the same old stuff every week!

You’ll be given the freedom to bring your own ideas, methods and work-style to the party, and to contribute to the decisions we make, and the actions we take, as a team.

We’re a team that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and we like to have fun, because life’s too short not to enjoy what you spend a large chunk of your day doing.

But we're very serious when it comes to high performance, continuous improvement and lifelong learning. And we’re on a mission to support you in becoming as awesome at your job as you want to be.

The Time Commitment

The time commitment is 37.5 hours per week, typically 9.00am til 5.30pm with an hour break. However, we embrace flexible working, so you are free to flex these hours to suit your commitments outside of work.

The only set work times that must be adhered to are to attend our scheduled internal meetings, and any external meetings that you agree with our clients.

We have an offshore team based out in the Philippines to keep in touch with, so there may be some early morning meetings (8am onwards) required to keep the communication lines open!

The Location

Our shiny (ish) new office is at Blayds House, opposite the North Bar Taproom on Soveriegn Street (which is very handy indeed).

Expect to be here for around four days per week during your probationary period, so that we can get you inducted, onboarded, and trained up to be able to perform the role to the absolute peak of your abilities.

Once you're fully trained up and able to fly solo, you’ll be able to work from anywhere in the world with internet connection and electricity - whether that be at home, your favourite cafe, in the pub, or a beachfront tiki bar in Honolulu.

The only time you’ll be required to be in a specific physical location will be for monthly / quarterly / ad-hoc meetings with clients, which will take place across the UK.

You’ll be on the road occasionally too! Travel to client meetings in places like Manchester & Liverpool will be required as part of the quarterly meeting rounds, as well as day trips to / overnight stays in London.

The Boss

Check out Rich’s mini profile here. He used to be on LinkedIn but he's had one of his anti-social-media tirades and self-sabotaged his profile page, so you won't find him on there, for now!

Started the business on his mum’s dining room table back in 2017. Spent the last six years diligently designing and building the rocket ship (mostly when he wasn’t in the pub, but also when he was).

Now ready to light the fuse and blast off, once he finds the perfect crew of co-pilots 🚀

The Ask

Come ready to change the world - one small business owner at a time 🤘

ROLE SPECIFICATION.

Role title: Client Manager

Contract type: Full time employment contract
With a 6-month probationary period / break clause

Reward: £24,000+ per annum depending on experience
Paid monthly in arrears, on the 28th of each month

Work pattern: 37.5 hours per week on a semi-flexible basis (see ‘The Time Commitment’ section above)

Location: Our HQ is at Blayds House, 21 Blayds Hard, LS1 4AD

You are free to carry out your responsibilities from any location that is suitable for delivering your role - strong internet connection and access to electricity are the main requirements

Access to a quiet space free from background noise will be needed for video and telephone calls

Face-to-face client meetings will be carried out quarterly basis, around the Yorkshire area and further afield

Holidays: 5.6 weeks holiday per year, including all UK public holidays

Additional benefits: Incentive-based bonus structure to be agreed following completion of a 6-month probationary period.

Home office allowance @ £6 per week

Dress code: Wear something

Reporting into: Senior Client Manager

Other relationships: Founder (UK). Head of FinOps (Philippines), Operations Team (Philippines)

Purpose of this role

As our new CloudCFO you will be responsible for delivering all aspects of the value proposition
that we offer our clients. That can be distilled into these three main areas:

Being a Virtual FC for our clients, helping their businesses to fulfil their potential,
and help them lead the lifestyle of a Rock And Roll Star
Being the human interface between the client and the operational systems of the business
Helping us to offer our services to more small businesses, and achieving our vision of every small business having access to a CloudCFO and a best-in-class virtual finance team

Responsibilities and Outcomes

Here is a flavour of some of the activities you'll be responsible for and the outcomes you'll be delivering in this role

Helping our clients improve the performance of their business

Understanding each clients’ vision for their business, and how we will help them to achieve it
Monitoring each client’s results on a weekly basis, communicating and engaging with them on the performance of their business
Review monthly and quarterly reports comparing the client’s results to their targets. Carry out variance analysis to identify where they’re on / off target and how they can improve their results
Attend monthly / quarterly meetings with clients, to help them make decisions that
will improve their business’s results

Ensuring our clients are supported and resolve with their questions
and concerns

Be the first point of contact for all client queries received via email and WhatsApp
Respond to clients’ questions and requests using the most appropriate communication method
Assist clients with technical questions on the apps and tools in their finance tech stack

We are delivering high quality work, and Clients’ data in Xero is complete,
accurate, and up to date

Reviewing the bookkeeping / payroll / accounting work that is completed by the Operations and Payroll Teams each week
Answer queries raised by the Operations Team on classifying transactions, bank reconciliations, client emails
Ensure clients are reminded about missing paperwork, payment approvals, and sign off of accounts / tax returns / VAT / payroll

Clients have control of the cash coming in and going out of their business

Approve supplier payment runs and payroll payments prepared by the Operations Team
Set up and maintain clients' purchase invoice approval workflows

New clients are onboarded efficiently, and consistently WOW’d throughout
our first 90 days working with them

Handling the communication and feedback with new clients throughout their onboarding
Conduct monthly onboarding calls

Our business achieves its revenue and profitability targets

Conducting our Discovery Call meetings with prospective clients
Complete quarterly fee reviews for existing clients

ABOUT YOU.

Core Skills

To be considered for this role, you must be able to demonstrate these core skills:

Have the ability to deliver written and verbal communication in a simple, clear, and warm style
Show a healthy mixture of heart (because we care about their success) and backbone (because we need to be firm with them when needed) when communicating with clients
Be able to analyse financial information and reports, and provide insights and ask questions about the underlying data and root causes
Be able to challenge our assumptions and ways of thinking, in the style of a critical friend
Hold our clients and our team to account for completing the actions which they’ve committed to

Values and mindset

Dare to be different - you’re not afraid to think, speak and act in a way that’s opposite to the status quo, conventional wisdom, and common sense
Extreme ownership - you’re able to bring energy & positivity to every project and task - even when things aren’t going as expected or planned
Growth mindset - you’re on a mission to be continuously improving & learning new skills, new software / apps, and new ways of working
Super communicate - you’re able to communicate with our team and with our clients using the right channel, with the right tone, at the right time
Naturally collaborative - you’re able to partner with others to create awesome results
Logical brain - you can understand the flow of a process, break it down into steps, and create clear and comprehensive instructions for others to follow
Build relationships - you’re honest, reliable, friendly and warm with other people
Agile - you seek feedback early and change course when needed, valuing continuous improvement over delayed perfection

Experience

Studying towards a recognised accounting qualification - e.g. ACA, ACCA, CIMA, AAT
Degree in a relevant subject
Minimum two years of experience working in finance and accountancy
Preparation and review of management accounts, statutory accounts, VAT returns, Corporation Tax returns, etc
Experience of a client-facing role within an accountancy practice would be an advantage

Career aspirations

You must have ambition and drive to help us create a more awesome business as we move forward.

We’re an early stage business, and we don’t yet have a full suite of sophisticated systems and processes built (but we’re working on it :) If you like to use your initiative and creativity, rather than sticking to what you’ve been asked to do, this is definitely the place for you.

This role offers you the satisfaction of seeing it grow into something bigger and successful in future. There are many ways you can grow with the company as it scales:

Developing new services that will allow us to deliver more awesome results for our clients
Specialising in specific areas to open up new revenue streams, deliver more value to clients, and help create more profits that can be re-invested into our business
Introducing new knowledge & skills to our Operations Team and delivering the training to embed them across the business
Getting involved with the business’s sales and marketing activities - through producing written content, video content, and running webinars

Our non-negotiables

These are the basic ‘hygiene factors’ that we require from you as a member of our team:

Punctuality - being on time for all of our scheduled meetings
Connectivity - strong internet connection wherever you're working from, with enough bandwidth to take part in video calls
Environment - you will need a quiet location to work from which is free from background noise when we’re on video calls
Commitment - we each provide full commitment to each other so we can work together for our mutual benefit

To apply

Check out our website for more information on our business
Register your interest using the button below (link to follow)

[Link to follow]

Thanks for reading!

Rich