what does a finance manager do?

Management responsibilities

The control and management duties that a finance manager is tasked with are;

• To supervise and provide leadership to the accounting department and other members in the finance department.
• To perform overall bookkeeping and keep records of all transactions, assets, and liabilities that the company has.
• To compile and analyze all the monthly financial and management reports, including income statements, balance sheets, budget projections, variance, cash flow reports and forecast projections.
• Attending industrial workshops and seminars to gather financial insights to help the company make better decisions about formulating and executing strategy. Use the insight to guide operational management to maximize results.
• Maintain overall control of the general ledger, accounts payable, expense reports, billing, and employee payroll.
• Assist Human Resource management in the maintenance of personnel files.

Transactional responsibilities

The finance manager oversees the transactions of the company using the following ways.

• Develop, implement, control and manage automated or physical procedures and controls that are involved in transaction processing.
• Oversee and ensure all transactions are processed accurately and promptly according to the employed transaction procedures.
• Create and maintain an automated system for processing the payroll, cash and bank reconciliations and allocations, revenue, expense and asset management systems.
• Conduct closing procedures for overhead allocations account reconciliations and update of schedules every month, half-year and year.

Reporting responsibilities

Ordinarily, the finance manager reports to the financial director of the company who then is a link between the staff and the board of directors of an organization. The finance manager performs the following in his reporting duty.

• He coordinates with the accounts department to prepare and issue accurate and timely financial statements at all levels to the executive management and board of directors.
• Assists in preparation of tax return statements and the preparation of the draft audited financial statements.
• Prepares the overall corporate annual report.
• Presents and produces cash flow reports to the executive management and board of directors to assist them in making annual budgets and forecasts.
• Analyze and calculate variances in the budgets and report significant issues to executive management and directors.
• Prepare models for financial analyses and prepare presentations on the information to do with capital investments, employee salaries for purposes of contract negotiation, company debt, growth projections and pricing decisions for executive management to make informed decisions on the direction to follow for company growth.

Compliance responsibilities

The finance manager must ensure that all government regulations are met and the company is operating at the maximum standards for best practice in the industry. The following are the financial management obligations that are done for compliance purposes by the finance manager.

• The finance manager prepares and organizes the schedules for the annual external or internal audit.
• The finance manager oversees the state registration filings and ensures all renewals are done promptly.
• He provides all the tax requirements are met, and the company products are state approved.

In summary, the job of a financial manager is to act as the head treasurer of the company where he figures out ways to obtain and accumulate capital; he then manages it in the most efficient ways that would ensure that shareholders get wealth maximization.

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