Superhero wanted
Must be good with numbers
Virtual FD (CloudCFO)
About Accelerate
What We Do
We believe that ambitious, disruptive startup businesses have the power to change the world.
Our mission is to help them to maximise the impact their organisations have on their communities, on society, and on the planet.
We’re an accountancy business that provides virtual finance teams to start-up companies, led by a ‘CloudCFO’.
‘Wtf is a CloudCFO!?’... A new breed of accountant built for the 2020s.
We leverage technology and offshoring to offer start-up businesses the support they need to increase their growth velocity, maximise their valuation, and achieve their full potential.
We operate using an 'Accountancy-as-a-Service' model - with an industry-standard tech stack, lightning-fast speed of deployment, and a monthly subscription fee. Working with Accelerate is the logical alternative to sourcing, recruiting, and training an in-house finance team for early-stage start-ups.
How we work
We are a digital accountancy business, born in the cloud, and living in the future.
By leveraging technology, offshoring and agile working practices - we can deliver amazing value to our clients by delivering many the benefits you’d get from an in-house finance team, but with less risk and for 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 with our small-but-super-agile company as our clients' new Virtual FD, or as we call it, a “CloudCFO”.
Your main area of responsibility will be looking after a portfolio of our clients - and be responsible for helping them realise their business's potential.
Whether that’s increasing their profitability, reinforcing their asset base, or removing the stress of financial admin - you will be using your super-powers with numbers, technology and communication to guide them on their journey to maximising their valuation and making an impact on the planet.
You’ll be a superhero in their eyes, because you’ll be making a profound difference to their financial success, 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 by helping purpose-driven start-ups to make an impact on their community, wider society, and the planet.
The Team
You’ll be the human interface between our clients and our 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 to provide you with accurate real-time data, insights, and reports on our client’s financial wellbeing.
Think of them as being your go-to in-house finance team - comprising a Financial Controller, Bookkeeper, and payroll bureau. All trained-up and on hand to help make your job, and your life, a breeze.
The Training
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Training will be provided 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 plenty of opportunities to develop 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.
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We’ll also up-skill you in business skills like coaching and selling - which will be super-transferable to pretty much any future role that you choose to move on to, and for many other facets of life in general.
The Growth
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You’ll be our second UK-based hire, and will be taking over the client-management reins from our founder Rich. This is a newly created role, where we’ll need your help refine the systems and processes as we get up to speed.
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 get rather serious when it comes to delivering 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
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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.
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If you're a parent to school-age kids, we're happy to make this a 'school hours only' and 'term time only' arrangement on a pro-rated salary. So you'd never be required to work when the kids are at home, and you can focus on being Mum or Dad.
The Location
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Our shiny(ish) new office is in Blayds House, opposite the North Bar Taproom on Sovereign Street (which is very handy indeed). ​
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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.
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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.
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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.
The Boss
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Check out Rich’s mini profile here. He’s still just about on LinkedIn but he's had one of his anti-social-media tirades and self-sabotaged his profile page, so you won't find any info on him on there, for now!
He started the business on his mum’s dining room table back in 2017, and has 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
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Come ready to change the world - one start-up business at a time 🤘
Role specification
Role title: Virtual FD
Contract type: Full-time employment contract
With a 6-month probationary period / break clause
Reward: £40,000+ per annum based on number of years of experience
Paid monthly in arrears, on the 28th of each month
Work pattern: 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 two 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 required out from time to time, and will currently be in places like Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, London, etc. Your travel costs to and from meetings will be covered by the company.
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: Founder / CEO (UK)
Other relationships: 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 two main areas:
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Being a Virtual FD (‘CloudCFO’) for our clients, helping their businesses to fulfil their potential, maximise their valuation, and make an impact the world
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Being the human interface between our clients and the operational systems of our business
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
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Helping our clients increase the valuation of their business
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Understanding each clients’ vision for their business, and how we will help them to achieve it
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Preparing forecasts, dashboards, and other analysis to support clients' decision making and fundraising
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Monitoring each client’s results on a weekly & monthly basis, communicating and engaging with them on the performance of their business
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Conducting monthly / quarterly meetings with clients, to help them make decisions that will improve their business’s performance and increase its valuation
Ensuring our clients are supported and resolve with their questions and concerns
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Communicating with all clients on a weekly basis as a minimum
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Responding to ad-hoc client queries and requests, so they feel supported and at ease
Ensuring that we are delivering high quality work, and Clients’ data in Xero is complete, accurate, and up to date
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Reviewing the bookkeeping / payroll / accounting work that is completed by the Operations Team and Payroll Teams each week
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Approve supplier payments and payroll payments on behalf of our clients
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Connecting up clients' finance tech stack and implementing policies and procedures for their team
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Clients meet their statutory filing obligations on time and remain compliant with company law
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Reviewing the statutory accounts, tax returns, and other filings prepared by the Operations Team to ensure they're free from errors
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Communicate upcoming deadlines for statutory filings, tax returns, and payments to clients
New clients are onboarded efficiently, and consistently WOW’d throughout
our first 90 days working with them
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Handling the communication and feedback with new clients throughout their onboarding process
Our business achieves its revenue and profitability targets
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Keeping our scope of work and engagement letters up to date, ensuring we're invoicing clients and getting paid for all of the value we're delivering to them
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Conducting our Discovery Call and Fireside Chat meetings with prospective clients, and clearly articulating the value that we can bring to their business and their life
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Conducting 1:1 calls with our Operations Team members to ensure they are able to raise questions, concerns and feedback, to ensure that we retain our best team members
About you
Core Skills
To be considered for this role, you must be able to demonstrate these core skills:
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Have the ability to deliver written and verbal communication in a simple, clear, and warm style
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Be able to analyse financial information and reports, and provide insights and ask the obvious-but-powerful questions
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Be able to challenge our clients on their assumptions and ways of thinking, in the style of a 'critical friend'
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Provide a layer of accountability to help clients complete the actions that they’ve committed to taking
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Build a healthy blend of heart (because we care about their success) and backbone (because we need to be able to have firm comversations when needed)
Values and mindset
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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
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Extreme ownership - you’re able to bring energy & positivity to every project and task - even when things aren’t going as expected or planned
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Growth Mindset - you’re on a mission to be continuously improving & learning new skills, new tools, new ways of working that will increase your performance levels
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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
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Naturally collaborative - you’re able to partner with others to create awesome results
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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
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Build relationships - you’re honest, reliable, friendly and warm with other people
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Agile - you seek feedback early and change course when needed, valuing continuous improvement over delayed perfection
Experience
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Recognised accounting qualification - e.g. ACA, ACCA, CIMA
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Minimum five years of experience working in finance and accountancy
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Preparation and review of management accounts, statutory accounts, VAT returns, Corporation Tax returns, would be an advantage
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Experience of a client-management role within an accountancy practice would be an advantage
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Managing an internal finance function in industry would also 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.
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Unlike a traditional accountancy practice or corporation, we don't operate a hierarchical structure with a clear progression up through the ranks from one level to the next.
Instead, we offer you the satisfaction of seeing your role grow and develop into something bigger and more successful in future. There are many ways you can grow with the company as it scales:
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Developing new services that will allow us to deliver more awesome results for our clients
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Specialising in specific technical areas to open up new revenue streams, deliver more value to clients, and gain a greater share of the profits we generate
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Introducing new knowledge & skills to our team and delivering the training to embed them across the business
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Getting involved with the business’s sales and marketing activities - through producing written content, video content, and running webinars
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Growing the business by helping us open up new branches in new locations, and overseeing their growth & development
Our non-negotiables
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These are the basic ‘hygiene factors’ that we require from you as a member of our team:
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Punctuality - being on time for all of our scheduled meetings
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Connectivity - strong internet connection wherever you're working from, with enough bandwidth to participate in video calls
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Environment - when working away from the office you will need a quiet location which is free from background noise and distractions
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Commitment - we each provide full commitment in each other so we can work together for our mutual benefit
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To apply
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Check out our website for more information on our business
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Register your interest using the button below...
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Thanks for reading!
Rich
