Accounts Assistant

Salary: £27,319.00 - £28,031.00  per annum

Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits. We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

Closing Date: 09 October 2025

The Role

Are you looking for a role that will give you exposure to a wide range of finance activity and the chance to work on projects that really make a difference?

We have an exciting fixed-term opportunity (15 months) for an Accounts Assistant to join our Contract Financial Management team.

This team plays a vital role in providing expert funder advice and financial management for the University’s research and non-research projects — often involving multi-million-pound budgets and collaboration with multiple domestic and international institutions.

This is a varied and rewarding role, giving you the chance to:

• Gain a strong grounding in all aspects of finance within a large, complex organisation
• Take responsibility for a diverse portfolio of projects once trained
• Use your initiative and judgement to make decisions and resolve issues
• Build strong working relationships with colleagues and stakeholders across the University

We’re looking for a confident communicator who is well-organised, customer-focused, and comfortable working to tight deadlines. Strong numerical and IT skills, along with attention to detail, are essential to succeed in this role.

If you’re ready to build valuable experience and play a key role in supporting impactful projects, we’d love to hear from you.

Informal enquiries are welcome and should be addressed to Donna Slassor via email: donna.slassor@newcastle.ac.uk.

Please ensure you upload a covering letter with your CV when applying for this role.

Key Accountabilities

• Creating research projects in the SAP financial management system in order to facilitate the most effective structure to ensure appropriate controls
• Preparing and submit starting certificates to ensure grants start within the required timescales.
• Producing research invoices/financial statements to specific deadlines and with regard to funder regulations and University policies.
• Preparing audit files to ensure that funder, University and statutory regulations are fulfilled.
• Providing comprehensive budgetary information and advice to researchers on the financial aspects of their funding to enable them to discharge their financial responsibilities.
• Reviewing and correct research project financial data in order to ensure funder conditions are met and to advise on the maximisation of cost recovery within the appropriate regulations.
• Maintaining and update data on the SAP financial management system relating to research projects (e.g. structure, budget, and timescale).
• Calculating and check salary award increases and update the salary budgets in projects.  To apply to funders for extension in funds where applicable or advising researchers to do so.
• Ensuring the timely closure of completed research projects in SAP and the completion of final reconciliations.

The Person

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• High degree of literacy, numeracy and IT skills and experience
• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal
• Experience in the reconciliation of financial ledgers
• Experience of working effectively in a large and complex organisation
• Experience of SAP financial systems is desirable
• Recent relevant experience of the set up and financial management of projects, and Research Funder financial knowledge is desirable.

Attributes And Behaviour

• Embraces change, reviewing and revising plans to meet with changing circumstances, changing ways and policies in light of new information.
• Communicates effectively, using appropriate tools and methods tailoring content of communication to the audience, changing style, tone and format appropriately.
• Plans workload and tasks in a systematic way, ensuring all activities are completed on time using systems and tools to ensure records and audit trails are clear and up to date.
• Works collaboratively with others, plays a positive role in teams and establishes and builds good working relationships.
• Delivers a high quality service to both colleagues and customers, demonstrating attention to detail and a positive attitude.

Qualifications

• Education to at least A level standard (minimum 3 x grades A-C) or equivalent standard by experience.
• It is desirable that you are AAT qualified (Association of Accounting Technicians) or equivalent.

Newcastle University is a global University where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.  As a University of Sanctuary, we aim to provide a welcoming place of safety for all, offering opportunities to people fleeing violence and persecution.

We are committed to being a fully inclusive university which actively recruits, supports and retains colleagues from all sectors of society.  We value diversity as well as celebrate, support and thrive on the contributions of all of our employees and the communities they represent.  We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams, we believe that success is built on having teams whose backgrounds and experiences reflect the diversity of our university and student population.

At Newcastle University we hold a silver Athena Swan award in recognition of our good employment practices for the advancement of gender equality.  We also hold a Race Equality Charter Bronze award in recognition of our work towards tackling race inequality in higher education REC.  We are a Disability Confident employer and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role as part of the offer and interview scheme.

In addition, we are a member of the Euraxess initiative supporting researchers in Europe. 

Requisition ID: 28648