about the job
The Contract Accountant owns the end-to-end financial management of customer contracts, ensuring accurate IFRS 15 revenue recognition, effective project accounting and strong financial control throughout the contract lifecycle.
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Working closely with Commercial, Delivery and Billing, the role translates contractual and operational developments into their financial and accounting impacts, providing the Finance Business Partner and senior Finance management with clear insight into emerging risks and financial performance.
Key Accountabilities
Contract & Revenue Accounting
• Revenue Recognition: Apply IFRS 15 to customer contracts, including multi-element arrangements, bundled services, and variable consideration, Identify performance obligations in the contract.
• Balance sheet control: Maintain accurate contract assets (unbilled revenue / WIP) and contract liabilities (deferred revenue) with monthly GL reconciliation.
• Group alignment: Prepare technical accounting memos for complex contracts and ensure alignment with the Group Chief Accountant.
Project Accounting & Margin Management
• Cost control: Monitor cost-to-complete against budget, identify margin risks, and support timely escalation of project financial issues.
• Project tracking: Set up project accounting structures (correct project ID/ billing entity etc. ) aligned to contract terms and delivery milestones.
• Track project revenue, costs, margins, and forecasts, ensuring alignment between delivery status and revenue recognition.
Billing, Invoicing & Cash
• Billing & Rev assurance: Monitor billing against delivery plans and contractual commitments, proactively identifying and resolving gaps or inconsistencies with CIL and Billing teams. Monitor unbilled revenue and support conversion to invoiced revenue
• Credit Note: Review and challenge credit note requests, ensuring they are valid, appropriately supported and correctly reflected in revenue.
• Monitor BDP: Monthly review of account SOA, monitor aged debts and proactively identify impacts to bad debt provisions.
Financial Close, Controls & Governance
• Reporting: Prepare month-end revenue, WIP, deferral, and accrual journals with clear variance analysis. Support Finance business partner for any analysis and month end reports.
• PO approvals: Review and approve POs, ensuring spend is appropriately authorised, correctly coded and aligned to project requirements
• Internal/External Audit: Support management and statutory reporting, ensuring balance-sheet integrity.
Stakeholder Partnership
• Partner with Commercial, Project Delivery, Legal, FBP and Billing teams to support financially sound deal and project execution.
• Provide finance input during deal and project reviews to highlight revenue and margin risks early.
Core Competencies
Technical
• Strong knowledge of IFRS 15 and practical contract accounting
• Solid project accounting and margin management experience
• Experience with long-term, milestone-based, or service contracts
Proficiency in MS Excel, SAP.
Analytical & Delivery
• High attention to detail and strong reconciliation skills
• Ability to manage multiple contracts and projects simultaneously
Business Partnering
• Able to translate complex accounting into clear commercial insights
• Confident working with non-finance stakeholders