About the job

Job summary

The Finance team provides support to all operational and non-operational teams across the SFO in managing their budgets, forecasts and accruals. They ensure that they have the right financial and management information and support to enable them to manage their resources effectively. The Finance team also maintains the SFO’s Finance system, e-Financials, and ensures that all income and expenditure transactions are processed promptly and effectively, and appropriate financial records are kept.

The Finance Officer is an essential role in the team, as well as the wider business, as they are responsible for correctly processing and paying supplier invoices and staff expenses. They also deal with supplier queries and reconciling supplier statements, registering and scanning all invoices received and ensuring they are correctly and promptly filed. Another crucial aspect of the role is carrying out bank and balance sheet reconciliations and preparing and posting journals to ensure that the system is up to date.

Working to the Finance Manager, the Finance Officer will also deliver support and training to non-finance users, carrying out basic system administration tasks and providing support and training to the other members of the finance team.

Job description

As a Finance Officer, you will be responsible for:

• Using eFinancials to properly register and process supplier invoices and staff expenses, batch these for payment and managing and delivering the weekly payment run. Identifying and reflecting invoices to be prepaid within the system.
• Deal promptly and correctly with queries, reconciling supplier accounts to statements, raising any issues with the Finance Manager.
• Complete the bank reconciliation, ensuring that bank transactions are entered correctly and in a timely fashion.
• Ensure that month-end journals are posted to ensure transactions are entered correctly and in a timely fashion, and are properly reported.
• Complete the monthly balance sheet reconciliations and review with the Financial Controller, taking action to resolve queries on any balances.

For more information about the role and for a full list of key responsibilities, please see attached Job Pack.

Person specification

See above and attached Job Pack.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £27,148, Serious Fraud Office contributes £7,329 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Application stage

You will first need to successfully complete the Civil Service Verbal Test.

Following this, as part of the application process you will be required to provide:

• A 250 word example of how you meet the behaviour Working Together.

The behaviour Working Together is a lead behaviour; this behaviour will be assessed first and candidates who do not meet the required standard will not have the remainder of their application considered. 

• Provide a personal statement of no more than 500 words that explains how your skills and experience meet each of the essential criteria as listed in the Job Pack.

It will not be possible to provide feedback to applicants who are unsuccessful at the application stage.

Interview stage

Behaviours and experience criteria as listed in the Job Pack will be assessed at interview. 

Full details of the interview process will be made available to shortlisted candidates in the invite to interview.

Sift to take place from 7th March 2024.

Interviews are expected to take place w/c 18th March.

All dates are indicative and subject to change.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.