Finance Apprentice Review

I spent just over 4 years as a Finance Apprentice, I will fortunate to be able to rotate around the finance department, spending time in Order to Cash, Record to Report, Master Data, Purchase to Pay, Performance Reporting and Group Treasury. In my final rotation in Group Treasury I was responsible for setting up Treasury payments, administration of the group's entire electronic banking users, bank accounts and bank mandates, as well as supporting with Treasury reporting.

Give this was my first professional role, my time at Sage has allowed me to gain skills that I wouldn't have been able to gain otherwise. These include: Professional Communication: sending formal e-mails and letters, organise and taking part in meetings, presenting to a group and telephone calls to colleague or stakeholders. Software: Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Excel and accountancy software such as Sage X3. Other skills include time-management, prioritisation of work and professional behaviour.

Overall, I'd say my time as an apprentice was fairly enjoyable. Sage provided a lot of support with my study, giving me one day out of the office each week and also allowing extra time during the working week if needed. There was always opportunities to mix with other departments and Sage are a very social company. The business is well connected and Sage really do try their best to communicate with colleagues as much as possible.

I believe this is the one area where my apprenticeship lacked, especially in the first couple of years. There didn't seem to be any clear structure to the scheme and nobody really took ownership of the finance apprentices, there were 4 of us who joined. However, this seems to have been massively improved now, as well as the learning and development team having a huge involvement, finance now also has a dedicated colleague who is in charge of apprentices.

Sage definitely excel in this area, in my opinion. There was never a time where I didn't feel supported, by both my colleagues and also my manager. Other teams in finance were also especially keen to help and support where possible. Always felt like there flexibility to either adjust working hours on certain days if needed, working from home was never and issue and I never felt like I wouldn't be able to ask for annual leave.

Northern Skills were overall a good training provider in terms of supporting during the qualification. There was sometimes delays in receiving text books for units, but there was always other learning materials made available for use. If unsure of something, tutors were always willing to help outside of classroom hours. Communication with Northern Skills was also generally good, they would send out regular newsletters via e-mail to keep students in the loop of what was happening at any given time.

Although my accountancy qualification couldn't be directly transferred into my Treasury role, the skills is gained in the qualification were vital to supporting my role. The areas of the qualification I found especially helpful were essay/report writing for written style questions, variance analysis and budgeting. The only slight issue was that my training provider was unable to provide the Treasury & Cash Management unit of AAT L4, this would have linked directly to my role, but instead we had to study both Tax units.

Sage excels in the extra-curricular activities department. There is always something going on, no matter what you're interested in. Especially for myself, these include football, golf society and on-site gym. Sage also advocate Sage Foundation, a charity organisation that allows Sage employees to use 5 working days each financial year to take part in volunteering activities. There is also a scheme where Sage will match charity donations up to £200 per employee each financial year too. The summer party and Christmas party are the highlight of the Sage social calendar.

Yes

Sage always support doing better, this means supporting colleagues through internal promotions, as well as support with qualifications that link directly to your role and also secondments if appropriate. Other benefits of working at Sage include; free on-site parking (Newcastle), a great group pension scheme, Save & Share scheme (allows colleague to purchase shares at a reduced price), discounts a wide variety of retailers, good bonus scheme, opportunities to travel with work and a generally friendly and positive work place environment.

My tips/advice to anybody thinking of joining Sage would be to get to know the company really well, how the company started and it's Newcastle roots and then where the company is now, and what direction it's travelling in. Secondly, I would suggest they really understand the role they're applying for, what they can offer to the vacant position and where they see the vacant role taking them and their career ambitions from the role.