Group Financial Controller
London
Finance – Accounting /
Full Time /
On-site
Easol is the leading all-in-one ‘experience commerce’ platform built to power experience businesses including festivals, wellness retreats, food and drink, sports and adventure trips. With Easol, experience businesses have complete control to drive more direct sales, retain more revenue, own their data and run their business on their terms.
Easol has deep roots in experiences. The platform was founded by former festival founders, Lisa and Ben Simpson in 2017, after the husband and wife team endured challenges and frustrations first-hand while setting up and growing their own experience business including Rise, Europe’s biggest Snowsports and music festival, and Beyond Adventures, a series of adventure travel experiences in remote locations such as the Sahara desert and the Swedish archipelago.
The Role:
We are looking for a Group Controller responsible for day to day controllership duties as well as group reporting and month-end accounting processes.
Easol’s business is relatively complex, as we process hundreds of millions in payments across multiple regions, a growing list of pay-in currencies and settlement currencies and operate through multiple corporate entities. In other words: this role will challenge you, guaranteeing you learn a lot!
Easol’s Finance functions were largely outsourced until 2023, and we’re in the process of designing the right setup that allows us to fully bring the function in house whilst balancing efficiency, rigour and rapid growth. The role offers a fantastic opportunity to play a pivotal role in improving and moulding our financial accounting and reporting infrastructure. You’ll be supported by a team of 3 on day one, who will look to you for leadership and mentorship.
Responsibilities
- Managing the month end close process and preparation of monthly consolidated management accounts
- Own financial accounting and reporting systems & processes and ensure tools used within the finance team are best in class
- Improve and manage our financial control processes to ensure that the business is able to scale effectively and operate efficiently
- FX forecasting and management of trading arrangements & FX accounting policies
- Ongoing working capital and cash flow reporting and management
- Ownership of statutory audit of our UK entities (and Group in future)
- Liaise with third party accountants and advisors in the territories we operate in to ensure compliance with local laws and regulations
- Review and submission of VAT and other tax returns both in the UK, US and across other jurisdictions
Qualifications and Requirements
- Qualified accountant (ACCA, ACA) ideally from a practice background with some commercial experience
- Strong IFRS and consolidations experience in a multi-currency environment
- Minimum 5 years post-qualified experience in a broad financial accounting role
- Team management and development experience
- Experience of US and European tax and regulation preferable
- Cash and working capital management experience ideally in start up/scale up environment
About You
- You’ll have a strong hands on and ownership mentality with a bias for action, ensuring you effectively balance the function’s day-to-day needs with developing the systems & processes required to maintain our pace of growth
- Fine attention to detail combined with the ability to cut through noise to focus on what matters most
- Process-oriented - we’re looking to you to redesign and beef up our processes
- Team-player with strong management skills and a desire to champion your team’s development and growth
- Ability to multitask, prioritise and thrive in a fast-paced and evolving environment
- You’ll have a passion for experience, travel and adventure. You are likely to spend your holidays kitesurfing in Sri Lanka, hiking the Nepalese mountains or at an alternative music festival.
🤗 You'll be joining a close-knit team working together from our East London office, just a 5-minute walk away from the Broadway Market
⚖️ You'll enjoy a flexible working set-up. We balance our desire to be present in the office as often as possible, with the freedom to work from wherever we need to be.
🧠 You'll have real visibility of what's happening in the business. We have weekly company meetings, where we all get together to discuss our wins, learning opportunities, our goals and direction.
🗣 There is an open forum for you to have your say in what we do and how we do it. We empower our team to share their ideas - no egos here!
🌏 You'll have access to our incredible perks, such as a company-funded "deep week", where you can travel to a destination of choice and have dedicated time to focus on a project that is important to you without distraction.
💰 In addition to that, we offer a monthly contribution towards a gym membership and your mobile phone contract, an annual personal development budget, support to choose your own equipment and a lot more.
✈ You’ll have 33 days of holidays, inclusive of public holidays.
🌱 Employees of all backgrounds and physical abilities will be supported by us in every way possible to thrive.
