Finance officer

Closing date for applications: 24 November 2025 at 12.00pm

Salary: £31,000 — £35,000 per annum (dependent on experience)

Interviews: w/c 1st December 2025

Bring your financial expertise to a leading London theatre and help power world-class productions behind the scenes.

The Almeida is a London theatre company with a national and international reputation for producing work of the highest standard - achieving recognition through consistent critical acclaim, increasing national reach, international profile, full houses and breadth of audiences.

The finance officer is responsible for inputting all of the financial data at an initial stage. They are responsible for processing the payroll, purchase ledger, recording sales and maintaining financial systems. This means they will gain a widespread knowledge of the Almeida Theatre and Bar operations, and they will be liaising with all departments of the theatre, from marketing to stage management. They should have a keen eye for detail and a conscientious approach to all of their work. They must be good communicators in order to access information regarding the financial systems and confident in applying rigorous controls in this fast-moving, creative environment.


Responsibilities

General

• To work with all staff to ensure they understand the importance of adhering to the financial controls and procedures
• To work within the finance team, supporting the director of finance & operations and finance manager

Payroll and pensions

• Check weekly timesheets from various departments
• Apply HMRC Updates and Notifications
• Post and process weekly and monthly payrolls on SAGE
• Print/distribute payslips
• Ensure all payroll costs are properly coded
• Ensure new staff are set up correctly with all relevant paperwork
• First point of call for payroll queries
• Preparation of net salary payments
• Incorporating new salary pay rates into payroll spreadsheets including budgeted hours for monitoring purposes and pass to managers
• Set up staff pension rate on SAGE payroll
• Process Now Pension scheme including postponement for staff opting out, in liaison with the finance manager

Monthly accounts

• Accuracy and completeness of data input
• Maintaining purchase ledger and supplier information
• Setting up supplier payments
• Operating the Soldo cards and Petty cash payments, control, reconciliation and importing data
• Bar sales income – data entry, reconciliation
• Bank reconciliation
• Drafting management accounts for the Catering company
• Assisting in preparation of production accounts by ensuring all purchase invoices, petty cash and soldo claims and credit card expenditure processed in good time, posted accurately
• Understanding of VAT codes for posting income and expenditure
• VAT Return for the Catering company

Assist with the annual audit

• Respond to the auditor’s queries especially with reference to Supplier invoices and catering transactions

Knowledge, skills & experience

Essential

• Experience of operating payroll
• Previous accounting experience
• Experience of account software
• Accuracy and attention to detail
• Excellent Excel skills
• A good communicator and advocate for the department
• Enthusiastic team player
• Efficient and methodical
• Responsible and reliable
• A willingness to learn
• An interest in theatre

Desirable

• Qualified at AAT level, or part qualified CIMA/ACCA or equivalent

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.