Senior Financial Controller — Consulting Close Recovery, Interim

The mandate

A consulting platform needs senior control of its quarter-end entity files: several bank-clearing and reciprocal balances are not yet substantiated, and close decisions have relied on informal instruction rather than an operable delegation. An interim Senior Financial Controller will take responsibility for rebuilding financial reporting control while the permanent controller appointment is completed.

The six-month fixed assignment starts on 26 October 2026, reserving five days each week and ending without extension. Initial work distinguishes missing evidence from genuine accounting errors and gives the team an executable recovery calendar. The December reporting cycle then becomes a live test of corrected ownership, followed by enough subsequent closes to establish whether the function can continue without external intervention.

Aged clearing entries must be investigated to their origin rather than cleared through a miscellaneous expense account. Intercompany differences may arise from timing, disputed service facts or entries booked in only one entity. Their resolution requires paired evidence and authorised accounting decisions. The interim will keep unresolved factual or contractual questions visible instead of creating the appearance of balance by posting an unsupported counterpart.

The controller may set accounting work priorities, reject inadequate reconciliations and approve routine adjustments within the Finance Director's delegation. Material historical corrections, exceptional payments and changes to accounting policy require formal approval. Tax opinions, commercial renegotiation and litigation assessment are excluded; relevant specialists supply their conclusions. The assignment also excludes a platform-wide system replacement or acquisition integration beyond the four-entity reporting perimeter.

Transfer requires three consecutively controlled monthly closes, resolved ownership of every material reconciliation and a permanent controller who reproduces the entity consolidation and bank-clearing review. The Finance Director accepts any remaining exceptions with their financial effect and follow-up date recorded. Handover is an operating demonstration, not merely delivery of a folder containing historical schedules that the successor cannot explain.

What you will own

• Triage inherited reconciliations by financial significance and evidence quality, identifying which balances require urgent investigation before a close approval can reasonably be given to the Finance Director.
• Decide a controlled entity-close recovery calendar with preparer and reviewer assignments, making approval dependencies explicit so absence of one accountant cannot silently suspend the entire reporting cycle.
• Investigate bank-clearing items through payment instructions, statements and ledger records, separating legitimate transit timing from duplicate postings, missing entries or unauthorised adjustments that require escalation.
• Produce reciprocal intercompany resolution files with paired entity evidence, recording timing, disputed facts and accepted treatments before consolidation removes balances that remain materially unsupported locally.
• Establish adjustment controls distinguishing current-period corrections from historical reporting issues, securing appropriate approvals and preserving the record needed by tax specialists and external auditors.
• Run close-review coaching around real exceptions, building accountants' ability to explain balance origins and corrective actions rather than rely on a checklist completed without substantive challenge.
• Conduct the successor's consolidation and bank-review replay, obtaining Finance Director acceptance of remaining issues and a clear date for the transfer of reporting responsibility.

Candidate qualifications

• Qualified chartered accountants should demonstrate financial close or assurance leadership across several legal entities, including personal investigation of a material clearing or reciprocal balance. Explain the original records you examined, the unsupported interpretation you challenged and the resulting accounting conclusion or assurance finding. Your evidence must establish substantive balance investigation that can guide close recovery, distinguishing your judgement from work performed entirely by others.
• Bring technical reporting competence covering consolidations, entity-level completeness and correction of errors. The engagement requires careful judgement when a reciprocal difference reflects unresolved commercial facts rather than a simple posting omission. Describe how you preserved reporting integrity while an appropriate decision owner investigated the underlying matter, including the significance assessment and approval trail.
• Show practical ability to lead an accounting team under a compressed reporting deadline without replacing substantive review with superficial checklist completion. Examples should include triage, allocation of scarce review time and coaching on material exceptions. A successful close must be both timely and explainable, with clear escalation when the available evidence cannot support approval.
• Establish five-day availability from the agreed start, including notice obligations and concurrent work that could interrupt ownership. Demonstrate reporting or assurance evidence another qualified professional could reconstruct independently: identify the source trail, review challenge and any clarification needed before the conclusion became reproducible. Explain how you would apply that transfer discipline to the permanent controller's close and reconciliation replay inside this fixed term.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 11 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-INT-2026-IND-052.