As the Vice President of Accounting Shared Services, you’ll be responsible for working closely with the VP, National Financial Services to design the organization required and develop the strategy needed to achieve a Global Support Service for A/P across the Company. The VP will also have oversight of and be the face of the Accounts Payable operations for all of the US markets. This role will partner with local leadership teams and assist with engagement of internal clients on transactional and financial accounting and reporting related matters to deliver exceptional service.

Accounts Payable

• Leads an Accounts Payable team of 225+ staff through 7 direct reports to ensure timely and accurate preparation and payment of all the US market payables as our goal to deliver the best financial accounting services in our markets.
• Partners with team members and local leaders to provide: i) timely and accurate payable processing and ii) vendor payments, as required. Support and drive solutions for exception payments like insurance, taxes, utilities, etc.
• Oversees support for current clients providing excellent customer service to support client retention while also supporting the onboarding of new clients.
• Maintains an ongoing awareness of the regulatory environment and issues that could affect our business model or our clients.
• Maintains a strong control environment and be open to process change, evaluating opportunities for continuous improvement.
• Oversees recruitment, development, and retention of account payable teams across markets in partnership with local HR leaders.

Business Partner

• Serves as one of the team members as the Point of Contact between FirstService and our third-party AP partner (today Avid) to Include contract negotiations, monthly benchmark and KPI’s and problem resolutions.
• Serves as a business partner to the team and operations identifying opportunities, risks and helping end users understand their business including:
• Cost control and outsource opportunities.
• Divisional and departmental profitability and efficiency.
• Evaluating processes and procedures to drive efficiencies.
• Develops and monitors operational and financial performance indicators monthly/quarterly, highlighting trends and analyzing causes of unexpected variance including:
• Key drivers
• Divisional and departmental benchmarking, and
• Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
• Leads on systems implementations and planning related integration of additional third-party providers.
• Bring departments together to solve problems and drive process improvement; share and execute best practices across the company.
• Represents finance on other major “cross functional” projects.

Financial Planning

• Manages and coordinates the execution of all facets of business planning cycle including annual budgets, quarterly forecasts, and long-term business plans.
• Ensures proper structures, processes, and disciplines around each planning deliverable, including the setting of timetables, communications of expectations and assumptions, ensuring proper checkpoints, reviews and sign-off and the preparation of required outputs (e.g.: standard presentations, variance analysis, etc.)
• Owns human capital financial forecasting in partnership with market HR leader.

Project Management

• Executes day-to-day project management activities for one or more large scale initiatives.
• Works with management to scope projects and manage work plans to ensure successful implementation.
• Handles all planning and coordination of implementation activities through very detailed project plans.
• Prepares regular communication status updates and presentation materials for senior management and staff on all aspects of the project, including timelines, accomplishments, key risks and issues.
• Coordinates and manages logistics around scheduling of vendor, governance & project team meetings.

Business Process Improvement

• Supports the design build of as-is and to-be process maps policies, procedure manuals and SLAs.
• Understands best practice design standards established and support adoption during implementation.
• Assists with development of end-user training materials and drive communication/training plan.
• Drives coordination of requirements between the business and IT to ensure alignment to business needs.
• Reports on key metrics to provide visibility into productivity / adoption of new technology and processes.
• Coordinates effort to maximize productivity and successful achievement of department metrics and goals.
• Participates in managing key software product roadmaps including prioritization of feature enhancements.
• Engages in maintaining key strategic relationships with software vendor to support and enhance product.

• Bachelor’s degree plus an accounting designation is essential together with prior experience in a senior financial operations role.
• Strong people leader skills to manage, motivate and support the team.
• Strong analytical skills to perform data collection and benchmarking against best practices required.
• Manages in a no surprises manner; proactively communicate financial issues to leaders.
• Ability to communicate a clear strategy and vision for Global AP and have experience in leading change management initiatives that bring people, process, and technology together from different functional areas to deliver a quality financial services customer experience necessary.
• Passion for gaining efficiency through process change while creating a positive team environment where we can recruit, develop, and retain talent.
• Comfort with rolling out new technologies, automation and outsourcing to third parties to improve accuracy, timeliness and maximize efficiencies a must.
• Knowledge leader in both financial accounting and the Condo/HOA industry. Sound business acumen and the ability to present practical solutions is a key requirement.
• Knowledge of Condo property management preferred multi-family rental or commercial asset.
• Experience interacting with or working through change management items with field operations personnel.
• Exposure to a company/industry in rapid transformation (people, process, technology, customer experience).
• Familiarity with projects focused on the implementation of new enterprise-wide technology platforms.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with high level of independence and accountability for their work.
• Familiarity or practical experience with Agile program management methodology necessary.