RQ1696327 – Housing Support Finance Officer

Job Details

Deadline – 25/02/2026

Main Purpose of Job:

To assist the Housing Support Accountant in the day-to-day operation and administration of the payment functions, ensuring timely payments and compliance with statutory, contractual and audit requirements.

Key Responsibilities:

1. To work with colleagues to ensure that the Council’s medium term financial strategies are delivered and support the Council’s Strategic Plan.
2. To use professional judgement, skills, and expertise to analyze and interpret financial information and situations, and to give support required by the Housing service area relating to Housing Payables. Identify when consultation with the Housing Support Accountant is required and refer issues as appropriate.
3. To work co-operatively and collaboratively with staff in the Housing Support Finance team, colleagues across service teams and with external partners and external auditors.
4. To provide support in all financial aspects of the Housing Payables finance.
5. To ensure delivery to key deadlines, challenging existing procedures and methodologies.
6. To highlight emerging issues and be proactive in recommending and implementing corrective actions.

Specific Duties:

1. Assist the Housing Support Accountant in the effective management of the Housing Invoices mailbox.
2. Review incoming emails containing invoices, delivery tickets, statements, credit notes, queries, and purchase order requests; split and save multi-invoice PDFs into individual files and store them in relevant folders.
3. Catalogue invoices into appropriate folders such as: To Be Matched, Totalmobile/Orchard, Stock, Purchase Order, Awaiting VO’s, Out for Signing.
4. Collate and gather the required information to the setting up of new vendors on the main accounting system as required by the Corporate Finance team ensuring documentation is correct.
5. Process invoices, credit notes, statements and other ad hoc payments requests received, through the document imaging software to main accounting system purchase invoice headers, linking orders where appropriate, and sending for approval.
6. Raising and providing Purchase orders for the Housing team, send for approval. Matching invoices to works orders in Orchard and completing these works orders.
7. Matching Goods received notes against invoices.
8. Match invoices with relevant delivery tickets and purchase orders; apply correct finance, department, and/or project codes, including separate VAT calculations for zero-rated and standard-rated items.
9. Process monthly direct debit transactions through the document imaging software to main accounting system purchase invoice headers and send for approval. Ensuring the documentation is accurate and complete and details are accurately recorded on the monitoring tool.
10. Ensure VAT is correctly recorded and assist the Housing Support Accountant in managing the process where VAT compliant invoices are obtained.
11. Respond in an effective and timely manner to queries relating to purchase invoice processing within your scheme of responsibility.
12. Raise queries with colleagues relating to the processing of purchase invoices and purchase orders effectively manage responses.
13. To champion the use of Purchase Orders within the Council providing advice and guidance to colleagues concerning purchase order receipting and the use of the correct vendors.
14. Upload and maintain resident details and meter details for utilities connections for empty properties to our chosen suppliers portal.
15. Process compliance-related service invoices (e.g., fire alarm servicing, asbestos inspections) by completing and approving jobs in Totalmobile/Orchard prior to entry into Business Central.
16. Verify and match stock purchase order invoices with Totalmobile records, liaising with Stores to confirm deliveries and resolve discrepancies.
17. For invoices without purchase orders, raise purchase quotes, obtain approval, and link generated purchase orders in Business Central.
18. Review and process credit notes, checking against previous invoices for accuracy.
19. Check supplier statements monthly to identify missing invoices and prevent supplier account holds.
20. Investigate and resolve discrepancies with suppliers such as incorrect charges, duplicate billing, or missing delivery details.
21. Accurately enter invoice and credit note details into Business Central, performing manual calculations and VAT adjustments as necessary, ensuring exact matches with purchase orders before payment approval.
22. Process Recharges, complete sales invoices to be sent to the accounts to process. Record the evidence and queries relating to Recharges of job to Tenants.
23. Person Specification
    

    	Essential	Desirable
    Knowledge and Experience	·      Experience of using Microsoft Office ·      Basic knowledge and understanding of invoice requirements including VAT	·      Experience of working within an operational Finance Team ·      Experience of transactional services and processing through to payment ·      Basic knowledge and understanding of Construction Industry Scheme (CIS)
    Skills and Abilities:	·      Able to work as part of a team ·      Work under own initiative but understand when to escalate matters ·      Good analytical skills and proactive approach to problem solving
    Education and Training	·      4 GCSE’s Grade A-C (or equivalent) including Maths and English, or ·      Demonstratable evidence of good levels of numeracy and literacy	·      Any general business-related qualifications i.e. NVQ2
    Other Requirements	·      A commitment to own development and to supporting training and development initiatives. ·       Necessary to work within data protection and confidentiality requirements