Finance Core Support Officer

The Open University; Milton Keynes; Hybrid; GBP 30,000 - 40,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent UK university in Milton Keynes is seeking a Financial Services Support Officer to join its busy team, providing crucial financial data and reporting. You'll work collaboratively with internal stakeholders, ensuring compliance with financial regulations while managing project budgets. Candidates should have strong Excel skills and previous experience in financial roles, contributing to a dynamic work environment. This position offers a potential hybrid work pattern with an emphasis on team collaboration and support.

Benefits

Flexible working arrangements

Comprehensive staff benefits

Professional development opportunities

Qualifications

• Recent experience in an accounting environment, preferably business partnering.
• Sound knowledge of budgeting and forecasting principles.
• Experience with financial regulations and procedures.

Responsibilities

• Support financial reporting and collate required data for projects.
• Resolve transactional queries and provide financial advice.
• Manage external and year-end reporting including TRAC and HESA.

Skills

Interpersonal communication

Problem solving

Attention to detail

Team working

Ownership

Education

AAT intermediate or equivalent

Tools

MS Excel

ERP finance system

Job description

Fixed Term Contract: End Date: Not Applicable

Welsh Language: Not Applicable

Change your career, change lives

The Open University is the UK’s largest university, a world leader in flexible part-time education combining a mission to widen access to higher education with research excellence, transforming lives through education. Find out more about us and our mission by watching this short video (you will be taken to YouTube by clicking this link).

About the Role

This is a varied role within a busy team who provides high quality financial services within the Finance Core Support / Shared Service function of the Finance Business Partnering team, at The Open University.

The role supports collation of financial information for external and internal reporting, as well as projects. It assists with the preparation and organisation of relevant data, allocating to the correct reports, and coordinating submissions to the relevant external or internal stakeholders when complete.

Part of the focus for this role is around running reports (using various systems) and ensuring the smooth delivery of support to units, faculties, and BP Hubs (services include managing and answering queries, triaging, and responding to ad-hoc requests). This includes running and distributing routine financial reports to other Finance colleagues, running reports on fee income, tuition, staff cost forecasting and projects, as well as the preparation and compilation of financial analysis and tables for external returns and documentation.

The role can also support the general routine maintenance of University’s unit / faculty projects (including research, commercial, and donations), adhering to the correct process and required regulation, reporting to key stakeholders, and providing support to audit where needed. This includes financial monitoring and reporting on externally funded projects budgets, forecasting, providing costings and financial monitoring, in compliance with both the University’s financial regulations and procedures, contracts, and the terms and conditions of the funders of the projects.

Interpersonal communication, problem solving, accuracy and strong attention detail are key attributes for success as the role also covers the collation of necessary information for financial due diligence, credit checks, and maintaining the project register tracker.

Key Responsibilities

• Supporting Business Partnering Hubs working with unit/faculty staff to provide financial input and standard reports that enable budget managers to plan and utilise university resource/budgets and inform future forecast and decision making as necessary.
• Resolving ad-hoc and scheduled transactional queries, proactively engaging with, assisting and guiding colleagues and stakeholders, and triaging when needed.
• Managing and resolving transactional audit queries and supporting colleagues when needed.
• Providing advice and guidance on university financial process and approach, appropriate cost / pricing methodologies, reporting and authorisation processes.
• Processing finance workflow for staffing changes when required.
• Completing SCF (Salary Cost Forecast) maintenance (informing rates, inflation etc.), updating / amendments to records in SCF and other systems.
• Support external and year-end reporting and collation of information including TRAC, HEBCIS, HESA, REF, TEF, KEF, plus Middle States accreditation.
• Working with project leads or managers completing SAP WBS project and donation set up, monitoring, maintenance (budgeting and forecasting), and closure.
• Checking project applications, supporting project staff cost analysis and reviewing claims and reports being submitted to various funders.
• Raising or reviewing sales orders/invoices including producing the supporting financial MI as required.
• Keeping up to date with funder and contractual terms and conditions as needed.
• Documenting, updating and adopting financial processes, principles, and approaches ensuring best practice, consistency and continuous improvement.
• Ensuring familiarisation with latest process and systems guidance, relevant policies, procedures and university financial regulations as necessary and supporting and advising colleagues when required ensuring compliance (internal and external).
• Line management of Core Support Assistant as required.
• Providing flexible cover across the BP Core Support Teams as required.
• Training and development of University staff in finance process and systems as appropriate ensuring consistency.
• Liaising with specialist finance support teams.
• Completing other such other duties as may be allocated from time to time both within the team and in providing cover in other areas within the division if required.

About You

• Recent, relevant experience of working in an accounting environment, ideally within management accounts or business partnering function.
• Experience of costing / budgeting / forecasting.
• Sound knowledge of MS Excel (creating tables and charts, using financial Excel functions such as formulas and pivot tables, managing / manipulating large data sets.
• Experience of adhering to accounting conventions, financial regulations, and procedures.
• Experience of preparing / involvement in audits.
• Practical experience of managing others and training / coaching when needed.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, with the ability to deal confidently with a range of people at all levels.
• Taking personal responsibility for getting things done, managing a wide variety of tasks; ability to plan, prioritise and managing own workloads.
• Experience of meeting critical deadlines and working under pressure.
• Ability to take ownership of a problem and resolve it, having taken full account of the facts.
• Can demonstrate how they successfully maintain attention to detail.
• Able to demonstrate strong team working and adding value to the team.
• Ability to build and maintain good working relationships within the team and the key stakeholders.
• Ability to take a balanced approach to hybrid working, both in person and virtually, using varied communication channels as appropriate.
• AAT intermediate or equivalent, and actively studying.
• Experience of an ERP finance system would be desirable.

Support with your application

If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email [e-mail] quoting the advert reference number.

What's in it for you?

At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).

We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.

It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where you can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d expect you to be in the office three days per week (Tuesday-Thursday).

Next steps in the Recruitment process

Interviews are anticipated to take place on-site week commencing 19 January 2026 and will consist of a panel interview and excel exercise.

Early closing date notification

We may close this job advert earlier than the published closing date where a satisfactory number of applications are received. We would therefore encourage early applications.

How to apply

To apply for this role please submit the following as separate documents:

• CV
• Supporting statement, up to 1,000 words, you should set out in your statement why you’re interested in this role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the required competencies for this role as detailed in the job and person specification.

You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.

If you have any queries or questions about the recruitment process, or regarding your application,please contact:[e-mail] .

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The Open University is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion which is reflected in our mission to be open to people, places, methods and ideas. We aim to foster a diverse and inclusive environment so that all in our OU community can reach their potential. We recognise that different people bring different perspectives, ideas, knowledge, and culture, and that this difference brings great strength.We strive to recruit, retain and develop the careers of a diverse pool of students and staff, and particularly encourage applications from all underrepresented groups. We also aspire to make The Open University a supportive workplace for all through our policies, services and staff networks.