Your Essential Guide to finding Finance Manager Jobs

Looking to pursue a career in financial management? Today the Job Mail team takes a closer look at finance manager jobs and what it takes to be a finance manager in South Africa.

Planning is a very important process in all businesses and organisation. When there is money involved it also becomes increasingly necessary to take steps to ensure that there is a proper and well documented process to manage an organisation or company’s finances. This process of planning and documenting a company or organisation’s financial resources is often referred to as financial management.

What is Financial Management?

Financial management is the process that governs the management of a company or organization’s finances.

This is done in order to ensure that a company or an organisation’s funds are managed in an efficient and effective manner and that the company’s income, expenses and assets are structured in a manner that helps maximise a company’s profitability.

Almost all companies, organisations and even government agencies often employ one or more finance managers to help with the process of finance management. While these jobs in finance are not easy, it comes with a lot of opportunities.

By pursuing this finance career you open up the possibility of working in any industry. You will, as a finance manager, literally be able work in all fields ranging from large law firms, technology companies to Non-Profit Organisations.

This is brilliant career option for someone with an eye for finance and the desire to have flexibility in where you can work. A caveat to this is that, depending on the organisation you work for, you must have industry relevant knowledge.

For example, if you work as a financial manager in real estate it would be important for you to have knowledge about real estate, how to evaluate and maximize profitability in the real estate. This knowledge will make you a lot more effective in your career as a finance manager.

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Finance Manager Job Description

As part of the finance manager job description, you will be expected to do everything from:

• Preparing an organisation’s financial statements.
• Reporting on business activity.
• Financial models forecasting future finances and expenses.
• Reviewing the organisation’s financial reports, looking at ways to maximise an organisation’s profitability.
• Helping the organisation make financial decisions that are advantageous to the organisation.

This is not an all-inclusive list, but it does give you a rough overview of how broad and challenging a career in financial management is.

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Where do Finance Managers work?

It must be highlighted that there are several different types of finance managers in an organisation. Each type of financial manager has a different role in an organisation.

A few of these are:

• The chief financial officers – this is the individual who oversees a company’s financial health and ensure that the financial management team is well managed.
• Financial Controllers – this individual oversees the accounting and budget departments in an organisation and generally tend to draft documents that summarise an organisation’s financial position.
• Credit Managers – who are overseers of an organisation’s credit.
• Treasurers – who ensure that the organisation’s financial goals are met.
• Risk managers – who manage the organisation’s financial risks.

Qualifications needed for Finance Manager Jobs

In order to pursue finance manager jobs it is advisable that you pursue tertiary education. It is to your advantage to pursue a bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, business, commerce or economics and relevant work experience of at least 5 years.

As with all professions however, experience trumps academic qualifications and there are many instances where companies employ financial managers who have a lot of experience but do not necessarily have the, ‘right’ academic qualifications.

Although it is possible to become a finance manager through experience alone, it is a much smoother journey if you have both the requisite experience and qualifications. Having both the qualifications and experience will make employers more interested in you as a potential employee.

If you do not particularly wish to pursue a bachelor’s degree in order to follow this career path, or if you already have a bachelor’s degree and would like to make your CV look more attractive to help you advance in your career, there are many academic options available for you to pursue.

This includes short courses on financial management on Get Smarter and Diplomas at business academic institutions such as Regent and Damelin to name just a few options. The option you choose should depend on your availability and what you are looking to learn.

One particularly important accredited course you may want to look into to help you in your pursuit of these jobs in finance is a Chartered Financial Analyst program. This program will give you the necessary technical skills required to excel in these financial careers.

You would, once you have completed this program, be regulated by the Financial Service Board, the CFA Society of South Africa and the South African Qualifications Authority. Finance manager jobs are governed by laws such as the Financial Advisory and Investment Services Act. If you choose to work as both a Finance Manager and a Chartered Accountant you will also be regulated by bodies such as SAICA.

Benefits of a career in financial management

The benefits of a career in Financial Management is that you once you have enough experience and once you get that financial manager position you had been working so hard for you can expect to earn on average around R480,000 a year. This is a finance manager salary, which by any measure is a great salary to earn.

In addition to this great salary package you will have an amazing opportunity to add value to a company’s operational capacity as a result you will be a highly valued employee and receive a lot of benefits that will make your employment package even more attractive.

You can also expect to have a lot of flexibility in deciding where you want to work. It is also important to highlight that a lot of career studies rank these jobs in finance as some of the top business jobs.

Qualified and looking for rewarding finance manager jobs on Job Mail? Register your CV and apply for the various vacancies listed on www.JobMail.co.za.