As a group commercial accountant at XXX, I was heavily involved in all aspects of the business. I was required to understand head office financial targets and their objectives for the company such as the marketing plan, personnel movement, operational plan etc. As I was closely working with the sales team, it was essential for me to understand the industry we operated in. I was involved in the regular sales meetings and their planning especially during negotiation periods. I also attended meetings when an external expert came to explain current market trends and advise what was the next most wanted service or product in the market. 

This information was incorporated into a financial plan for the company. For the division I managed, I was involved in planning their expenditures during the budget period. I followed up with regular reviews during the financial year on the actual spending against the budget and revised into on-going forecast along with the sales forecast. I also had regular meetings with budget holders in the division to ensure they were up to date with any changes which would affect the business financially such as gain and loss of a contract. An action plan was made together in order to ensure the overall business objective was not diverged from due to the changes.

During the contract negotiation process with the customers, proposals were discussed with the division and senior management with my assistance on financial planning for the potential contract. Costing of the products involved were built from the ground up alongside other necessary spending such as marketing, head office cost, promotion, spending for the contract, availability of the operation etc. This gave us a good understanding of whether it was beneficial to take on the contract from the customer and what price should be charged to achieve company objectives.

Agreeing on the budget with each budget holder could be a lengthy and difficult process. It was essential for all parties to understand the overall business objectives and acknowledge the challenge ahead internally and externally, especially the ever-changing business environment. It would help to build the action plan into the budget to ensure the business objectives were achieved by the end of the designed period.

The finalised budget was agreed with the board and communicated individually to the budget holders. The budget holders were responsible for monitoring their budget with help from my team and I. Reports were tailored to specific purposes in order to show the analysis between actual and budget to each budget holders. I worked closely with the budget holders to ensure the analysis and the reports were meeting their needs to control their budget. I would also identify the key points on the variances to the budget holders, so they were aware of what was causing the positive or adverse variances. An action plan was generated after the meeting to control or administrate the negative variances as well as enhance positive effects.

I was responsible for reporting and explaining any anomality and negatives variances to the senior management. Sometimes, we also needed to understand the positive variances. It helped the business to know what was working and what was not. I was also responsible for the accuracy of the data used to show the variances. Mistakes were easily made especially if data was collected manually and it was important we got the correct picture from the data.

Lilian was the lead of the company annual budget process from start of her role. She acted as the central point of budgeting and forecasting in the company coordinating the process, consolidating the figures and providing analysis to management. She was also involved in setting the sales team's budget which formed their performance incentive targets. 

For the business units which didn't have production sites in UK, she was also responsible to produce the budget for those business units through working with relevant stakeholders. She would act as that business unit accountant and forecast their sales and expenditure for next 18 months including the budget for coming financial year. The process included projecting the customer sales pipelines, analysing the market position with the sales team. Lilian then would prepare the expenditure in line with sales projection including checking transfer pricing with our head office and stock level in the warehouse. She also discussed with the senior management and units director in order to prepare the overhead expenditure. 

Once the overall budget was agreed with the head office in Denmark, Lilian would agree with the UK senior management the divisional budget and ensure the budget was implemented as a measure for the business. She also had the task on implementing the budget onto the computerised system so it could be monitored against the actual sales. She had the duties with her team to monitor and report the budget variances to business units and senior management. She analysed and commented on any variances on weekly, monthly, quarterly reporting in order to alert any issues to senior management.