Working Capital Controller, Sydney

The Role

The Working Capital Controller is a senior finance role with endtoend accountability for the Australia offices working capital performance across work in progress (WIP) billing collections debt and trust account administration. The role leads a team of working capital professionals and acts as a trusted commercial partner to Partners and senior lawyers supporting compliant profitable and timely delivery of client matters.

Working closely with Partners Lawyers and specialist teams (including Business Development Legal Practice Management Tax and Commercial) the role balances strong commercial judgement with rigorous control and policy compliance across local regional and global requirements.

This role plays a critical part in protecting cash flow profitability and financial discipline while enabling Partners and lawyers to deliver successful client outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

1. Business Partnering & Stakeholder Management

Build strong credible relationships with Partners lawyers practice support colleagues and clients; act as a trusted commercial adviser to influence decisionmaking.

Proactively follow up with Partners and practice support colleagues on agreed actions to resolve matter billing and collection issues.

Respond to financial and commercial enquiries from clients Partners and lawyers relating to client matters.

2. Commercial Support & Matter Economics

Partner with Business Development teams at matter inception to ensure new matters are structured in line with firm policies with optimal profitability and minimal tax risk.

Review and support rate setting for Australian matters including promoting use of the APAC rate card for Australian support on overseasled matters and maintaining awareness of local regional and global client rate agreements.

Perform inprogress reviews of matters and proactively escalate commercial recovery and profitability risks to Management Tax and Commercial teams.

Champion use of in-house commercial tools and reporting (including MRPT and Power BI dashboards) guiding Partners and lawyers on ongoing profitability analysis.

Support delivery of commercial awareness training to Partners and lawyers in collaboration with the Commercial team.

3. Working Capital Management

Lead regular financial review meetings with Partners and Senior Lawyers covering fees profitability billing status WIP and debt.

Perform monthly WIP provision assessments in compliance with IFRS 15 including forecasting and reporting the revenue impact of significant provision movements.

Assess and recommend WIP and doubtful debt provisions in line with firm policy.

Closely monitor matter progress and recovery anticipating WIP writeoffs and uncollectable debts and escalating risks early to enable timely intervention.

Drive collections performance by focusing on longoutstanding debts and partnering with Partners to achieve timely recovery.

Set and monitor monthly billing and collection targets based on WIP and debt profiles.

4. Controls Governance & Team Leadership

Provide strong leadership coaching and direction to the Working Capital team to deliver highquality billing and working capital support.

Ensure working capital operations comply with firm policies accounting standards and local regulatory requirements through training and a robust controls framework.

Act as an approver for billing and working capital controls within Control Manager.

Collaborate with Working Capital Controllers across the global network on crossborder matters billing issues and bestpractice sharing; contribute to regional and global finance initiatives.

Qualifications :

Your Experience

• Professionally qualified accountant (e.g. CA CPA ACA or equivalent).
• Significant postqualification experience in working capital billing or commercial finance roles ideally within a professional services or partnership environment.
• Demonstrated experience managing WIP billing collections and debt provisioning including application of IFRS 15.
• Proven people management experience including leading and developing highperforming teams.

Technical & Commercial Skills

• Strong understanding of matter economics pricing profitability and recovery in a project or matterbased environment.
• Experience working with billing systems financial controls frameworks and commercial reporting tools (e.g. Power BI or equivalent).
• Sound knowledge of accounting standards internal controls and policydriven environments.

Stakeholder & Leadership Capabilities

• Confident and credible communicator able to influence senior Partners and stakeholders with commercial insight.
• Strong judgement and problemsolving skills with the ability to balance commercial outcomes and risk management.
• Highly organised resilient and comfortable operating in a fastpaced deadlinedriven environment.
• Collaborative leadership style with a continuous improvement mindset.

Additional Information :

Equal Opportunities

At Clifford Chance we understand that our true asset is our people. Inclusion is good for our team and their families our firm and society.

We are committed to treating all employees and applicants fairly and equally regardless of their gender gender identity and expression marital or civil partnership status race colour national or ethnic origin social or economic background disability religious belief sexual orientation or age.  This applies to recruitment and selection terms and conditions of employment including pay promotion training transfer and every other aspect of employment.

We have a variety of flourishing employee networks. These networks are a place for colleagues to share experiences and advocate for change wherever they see an opportunity for improvement.

Our goal is to deliver an equality of opportunity an equality of aspiration and an equality of experience to everyone who works in our firm. 

Find out more about our inclusive culture here

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Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time