Finance Associate - Accounts Payable at KPMG LLP · Birmingham

Group Corporate Services (GCS) is the home for all internal support services that support the combined firm. Working with our Capability-led matrix and throughout the whole firm, GCS executes on our Group's strategic goals by enabling growth, protecting the firm and running operations effectively and efficiently, resulting in improved profitability. We do this using a ‘We are Group’ mindset.

Group Finance & Commercial

The Group Finance & Commercial domain is empowered by technology, guided by data and committed to delivering commercial challenge and strategic value to the Group. We ensure that our financial performance is accurately stated and reported upon and is compliant with accounting policy. We translate financial information into meaningful insights that inform commercial decision making enabling our commercial specialists to provide guidance and support to partners and engagement leads.

To enable KPMG to offer Commercially attractive solutions to our clients, ensuring we protect the firm’s profitability and growth aspirations whilst remaining competitive in the market. We provide experts, processes, systems and policies to enable the business to manage financial responsibilities within both its P&L and Balance Sheet and understand the impact of strategic Commercial decisions. We support the business across all Finance related operational activities including payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable, budgeting and forecasting, cost management and control, investment tracking, treasury and cash flow. Our Commercial team support all aspects of the complete sales cycle end to end providing Commercial Guidance and support throughout with direct client-side negotiation, through to contracting support on key engagements ensuring we protect the firm against financial, commercial, and reputational risk.

About the team:

The Accounts Payable & Expenses Team processes and pays supplier spend and business expenses for UK colleagues. You’ll join a collaborative Finance Operations team that provides practical finance support and expertise to colleagues and suppliers, using systems including SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP), SAP Concur, Coupa and AMEX online. The team is supportive, improvement-focused and offers opportunities to broaden your knowledge across finance operations.

About the role:

As an Accounts Payable Associate, you’ll help deliver accurate, timely and controlled accounts payable and expense services. You’ll manage operational work queues, payments, reconciliations, corporate card administration and system activities, while resolving queries professionally and following KPMG policies and authorisation requirements. The role suits someone who enjoys problem solving, takes pride in accuracy and wants to help improve processes and team performance.

What you’ll be doing:

• Manage Coupa invoice work queues, clear items within service-level agreements (SLAs) and handle escalations professionally.
• Review submitted expenses against KPMG policy, challenging or escalating items where appropriate.
• Reconcile accounts payable general ledgers and take remedial action on items such as unclaimed value added tax (VAT), personal expenses and suspense balances.
• Process urgent and manual payments through the online banking system, following strict authorisation controls.
• Administer KPMG’s corporate card scheme, including applications, leavers, accrued transactions, delinquencies, credit balances and ledger reconciliations.
• Support SAP Concur administration, including interface monitoring, resolving failed postings and contributing to system enhancements.
• Oversee the centralised business travel account (BTA), ensuring travel costs are reconciled and paid each month.
• Take ownership of payment runs and prepare manual journal uploads for adjustments and transfers in SAP.
• Provide clear guidance on finance policies and processes, resolving queries through support tickets, email, telephone, face-to-face and other internal channels.
• Champion process improvement and contribute to continuous individual and team development.

Skills, knowledge and experience you’ll need:

• Practical accounts payable experience gained within a large organisation, with a good understanding of the end-to-end process.
• Experience processing invoices, supplier payments and account reconciliations in a multi-currency environment.
• Knowledge of foreign currency transactions, exchange-rate differences and the reconciliation of multi-currency supplier accounts.
• Experience using SAP or a similar ERP platform; familiarity with SAP Concur or Coupa would be useful.
• Strong attention to detail and accuracy when working with financial information, controls and deadlines.
• Confident written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to resolve queries with suppliers and internal stakeholders.
• Strong organisation and prioritisation skills, with the ability to work effectively both independently and as part of a wider finance team.