Accounts and Financial-Control Director — Services Bridge

The mandate

Service-contract billing and statutory close preparation are running in parallel. Payables, receivables and reporting managers can maintain transactions, but disputed contract balances and adjustments currently move between teams without an accountable conclusion. The interim director must restore financial-control decisions at accounts-leadership scope rather than pretending to occupy a group CFO seat.

The bridge begins on 19 October 2026 and is contracted for nine months. Recruitment for a permanent accounts and control leader will run throughout the first half of the term. Mumbai is the base, with scheduled visits to India delivery and project-finance teams; international reporting reviewers participate remotely. Any extension must be tied to a specific successor or unresolved handover condition and separately authorised.

Completion requires three controlled closes, an accepted receivables dispute register and statutory-support files whose accounting conclusions can be followed to contract and ledger evidence. The successor must run the close timetable, review judgement-heavy balances and receive an explicit list of remaining tax and audit dependencies. A reduction in reconciliation counts is not enough if unsupported amounts have simply been netted or written off.

The director may approve accounting schedules, assign review responsibilities and resolve routine policy application within the CFO's delegation. Write-offs above ₹10 lakh, deviations from approved revenue policy, settlement of litigation and permanent leadership hiring require escalation. External auditors retain independent conclusions, and statutory officers retain signatures. The appointment does not confer authority to decide every tax treatment simply because an account contains a tax balance.

Out of scope are fundraising, business acquisitions and a full service-delivery transformation. The bridge does include disciplined AP and AR control, variance explanations and readable management reporting. It should leave a finance team capable of distinguishing contract entitlement, billing timing and collection uncertainty, with no need to ask the departing interim to reconstruct why an adjustment was made.

What you will own

• Approve a close responsibility matrix linking each material balance to its preparer, reviewer, evidence and escalation deadline, identifying matters needing CFO judgement before reporting.
• Resolve service-contract receivable classifications using entitlement, billing and collection evidence rather than ageing alone, recording the required commercial action or accounting review.
• Authorize payable and accrual reviews distinguishing genuine delivery obligations from stale or duplicate estimates, preserving supplier evidence and the basis for release or additional expense.
• Establish statutory-support files for material reporting judgements, preserving reviewer challenge and policy references so external review can trace the conclusion without reconstructed histories.
• Set management variance explanations reconciling operational narratives to controlled financial amounts, separating price, volume, timing and judgement effects before the CFO receives the performance paper.
• Transfer a successor close rehearsal and exception register showing decisions, retained limits and unresolved audit or tax dependencies, with next evidence dates and accountable owners.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate eighteen or more years in accounting and reporting with head-of-accounts, controller or director-equivalent responsibility in business services or project-led operations. Provide a close problem you personally resolved, identifying the unsupported balance, your delegated decision and the evidence accepted by finance or audit reviewers rather than relying on a senior title.
• Bring a recognised accounting qualification and working command of Ind AS plus IFRS or US GAAP interfaces where relevant. Show a service-contract revenue, accrual or provision judgement that required more than mechanical reconciliation. Explain the separation between accounting policy application, statutory sign-off and independent audit conclusions.
• Evidence practical leadership of AP, AR and management reporting, including a case where collections improvement depended on correcting billing or entitlement documentation. Describe the controls that protected suppliers and customers while issues were resolved, and how you verified that the reported improvement did not merely postpone expense or hide dispute risk.
• Prove you can lead accounts managers through statutory preparation and successor transfer. Supply an anonymised judgement file or close playbook example, explaining reviewer ownership and how another leader replayed the process. Tax credentials may support collaboration, but appointment authority remains bounded; candidates must be available for the specified nine-month operating bridge.

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 8 October 2026. Mandate reference PCT-INT-2026-IND-44.