Finance Analyst Review

- Forecasting Budgets - predicting future costs and Full Time Employee rates - Creating invoices - using finance systems to create invoices - Month End reporting - Identifying what the costs are each month, analysing deviations to budgets and report back to leaders. - Raising Journal Entries - Identify & Implement continuous improvement opportunities - e.g. utilising IT tools to automate & simplify process - Engaging with customers to solve problems - e.g. sharing financial data with the customer, the customer believes there's a problem with the data. I reach out to further understand the problem and recognise that the customer thought the data was in a different currency. - Communicating with colleagues internally to solve problems - e.g. correcting an invoice. - Learning about the business and real life implications of events.

I have developed skills in: - Power BI - learning how to create reports - Excel - learning new formulas and shortcuts - Leadership - managing priorities - Communication - being concise - Problem solving - understanding the best way to approach and create a solution to a problem - Networking - Spending time getting to know colleagues on a personal level, which helps build knowledge on who would be useful to ask for help for what.

I enjoy participating in the programme with other apprentices as it provides an effective support network to talk to problems and challenges with. Also, I enjoy having a supportive manager who pushes me to develop my skills while supporting the team. The programme can be hard in managing multiple work projects as well as keeping up to date with exams. However, I think the hard work is worth it!

The programmes organisation could do with some improvement... The programme currently works by a finance apprentice manager managing all the finance apprentices. There is a good foundation to what the programme should be like - where each finance apprentice gets to spend a year with a team, then rotates into a different team year. However, in real life it can be hard finding teams to hold the apprentices and create a handover plan of when to switch from 1 team to the other.

I receive a lot of support from my employer. I have 30 min catch-ups with my manager every week, and 1 hour group catch-ups each month with my apprentice manager. In these catch-ups I am able to go through topics such as what I am finding challenging and ways I could develop. I also have a mentor who provides support to me by offering advice and someone who will listen. I failed an exam recently, and my employer provided lots of support to me via reaching out to my college provider and exam body to help me get extra support.

I receive a lot of support from my training provider. When I have upcoming exams, I sometimes will reach out to my tutors for help and they are always willing to have a 30 min catch-up on a topic and send over additional resources to help me. From a well-being perspective, I have a catch-up with my skills coach every couple months where I am able to speak up if I mentally struggling. My training provider also has mental health officers who I can reach out to.

There is limited direct knowledge transfer from what I learn during my qualification and my day to day job... What I learn at college gives me more of a foundation, whereas at work, my workload relates to more advanced stuff. E.g. At college I learn about different budgeting methods and the pros and cons to each method, whereas at work I complete the budget to the method required.

There are lots of extra-curricular activities to get involved in at work...this includes: Social activities, professional networking events, and some sports teams.

Yes

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