Lead Accountant

The company

Why this role exists

What you own

1. The monthly and quarterly close

• Own the close calendar across all group entities. Publish it, run it, and land it on the agreed day.
• Prepare and review journal entries, accruals, prepaids, deferred revenue, intercompany, and foreign exchange entries.
• Own the balance sheet reconciliations — a documented, reviewed reconciliation for every material account, every month, with supporting schedules a third party can follow without a conversation.
• Prepare the monthly reporting pack for the Controller’s review, with variance commentary that says what moved and why.
• Where two reports disagree, find the cause, fix it, and write down the reconciliation. This is a standing expectation of the role, not an occasional task.

2. Revenue accounting — execution under ASC 606

• Apply the group’s revenue recognition policy across SaaS subscriptions, hosted and on-premise licenses, support and maintenance, implementation and data migration services, training, and third-party pass-through.
• Own the deferred revenue and contract asset roll-forwards, reconciled to the contract population rather than to last month’s balance.
• Review new and renewing contracts against the revenue checklist and escalate anything that does not fit it — multi-element arrangements, consortium and statewide agreements, mid-term expansions, non-standard terms.
• Maintain the schedules that support the policy, and flag where the policy does not answer the question in front of you.

3. Order to cash, and collections in particular

• Own billing accuracy across renewals, new business, change orders, and professional services, and the handoff from contract administration into the ledger.
• Own the accounts receivable ledger and the collections process — aging discipline, a documented dunning cycle, escalation paths, and weekly reporting on aging and days sales outstanding.
• Be clear on what you are taking on: one legacy entity currently carries the large majority of its receivable book past 30 days. Improving that aging against a baseline agreed in month one is the single most measurable objective in this role, and it will require working with sales, customer success, and public sector procurement contacts — not just the ledger.
• Own accounts payable — approval workflow, vendor master integrity, payment runs, and 1099 and T4A reporting.

4. NetSuite — operate it, and get your areas across the line

• Carry the finance-side migration work for the areas you own: opening balance validation, sub-ledger tie-out, historical comparatives, and the parallel-run reconciliation.
• Operate the system day to day — general ledger, accounts receivable and payable, revenue module, multi-currency — and build the saved searches, reports, and dashboards that replace offline spreadsheets.
• Document what you configure and write the desk procedures, so the work is not dependent on you personally.

5. Supervision and process

• Supervise the Staff Accountant and the Accounting Administrator — allocate work, review output, set standards, and develop them. This is real people management, not work direction in name only.
• Write the desk procedures for the whole team. Where knowledge lives in one person’s head today, get it on paper.
• Recommend how the team should be structured as the group grows, and make the case for it.

6. Audit and control evidence

• Prepare the audit and review schedules, manage the request list, and clear items to a timetable.
• Support indirect tax compliance with advisers — US sales and use tax including software and SaaS nexus, Canadian GST/HST and provincial taxes, UK VAT, and state and provincial registrations.
• Execute the finance-side controls the group needs for SOC 2 and ISO 27001 readiness — evidenced approvals, documented segregation of duties in NetSuite, and access reviews for finance systems. Control design sits above you; operating the controls and producing the evidence is yours.

What we need you to have

Required

• Full ownership of a monthly close in a multi-entity environment, including reviewing other people’s work.
• Hands-on ASC 606 experience in a subscription software or SaaS business. You have prepared deferred revenue roll-forwards and worked multi-element contracts yourself. You understand the difference between a booking, an invoice, and revenue.
• NetSuite experience, hands-on. Migration or implementation exposure is materially preferred over long tenure as a routine user.
• Multi-currency and intercompany experience — you have prepared translation, remeasurement, and intercompany entries, not just read about them.
• Accounts receivable and collections ownership, with a track record of moving an aging profile you can describe in numbers.
• Supervisory experience — you have managed or closely reviewed at least one person’s work, including giving difficult feedback.
• Bachelor’s degree in accounting or finance and five or more years of progressive accounting experience.

Preferred

• CPA or CA, or actively pursuing it. We will support completion.
• Experience in a private-equity-backed business — monthly discipline and short-notice requests are normal here.
• Experience bringing an acquired set of books onto a group chart of accounts and close calendar.
• Cross-border US and Canada experience, including indirect tax in both.
• Advanced Excel and comfort with data — large reconciliations, Power Query, and enough reporting-tool fluency to answer your own questions.

How you work

• You reconcile rather than choose. You will find figures that do not agree. We need someone whose instinct is to find the cause and document it.
• You write things down. Procedures, schedules, and commentary that outlive the month they were produced in.
• You are comfortable being the most senior person in the detail. There is no one to hand a hard reconciliation to.
• You escalate early and plainly. Bad news travels fast to the Controller. That is expected and it is safe.