Director, Balance-Sheet Substantiation

The mandate

The Director will own balance-sheet substantiation as a permanent accounting discipline that tests existence, completeness, valuation, rights, obligations and classification—not merely whether a reconciliation has been uploaded. The remit spans policy, risk tiering, reviewer expectations, ageing governance and the route from identified difference to corrected source accounting.

The first quarter will establish a balance universe, current evidence quality, unexplained and aged items, recurring write-offs and accounts whose apparent zero difference conceals weak support. The Director will differentiate true substantiation from roll-forward, system agreement or management assertion. Findings will shape risk-based standards rather than a uniform checklist.

Special attention will be paid to clearing and suspense balances, dormant accounts with periodic movement, long-standing deposits, accruals supported only by prior-period schedules and reconciliations whose preparer controls both sides. The Director will specify when external confirmation, legal support, valuation evidence or independent reviewer access is necessary.

Authority includes assigning reconciliation frequency and review depth, rejecting inadequate support, requiring corrective ownership and escalating unreconciled exposures. Reserved accounting conclusions and material write-offs remain with designated approvers. The role does not own source operations or independent assurance, but it may require those owners to address evidence gaps.

By month six, high-risk accounts should operate explicit evidence criteria and aged exceptions should have accountable dispositions. By month twelve, reconciling-item recurrence, unexplained write-offs and post-close corrections should decline. Governance will receive a view of residual accounting risk rather than a misleading percentage-complete statistic.

The Director will develop account owners and reviewers who understand the assertion being tested and can challenge supporting evidence. Sustainable maturity means fewer balances depend on institutional memory and reviewers intervene before age or value forces escalation.

What you will own

• Define substantiation standards by account risk, assertion, volatility, judgment and source reliability.
• Establish a complete account-owner and reviewer inventory with appropriate independence and delegation.
• Reject reconciliations that agree systems without proving the underlying accounting assertion.
• Govern reconciling items by cause, age, amount, consequence, action owner and expected disposition.
• Direct root-cause correction where recurring items or write-offs indicate deficient source accounting.
• Build quality measures covering evidence, recurrence, review challenge and post-close correction.
• Present material unresolved exposures and trends to senior finance governance.
• Develop preparers and reviewers through calibrated examples, observed reviews and targeted reassignment.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate enterprise ownership of balance-sheet substantiation beyond reconciliation administration.
• Describe an account that appeared reconciled but lacked evidence for a key accounting assertion.
• Show how you cleared aged items without using arbitrary write-off or unsupported netting.
• Evidence risk-tiered standards that changed reviewer behaviour and reduced recurring differences.
• Provide measures that exposed weakness hidden by high completion percentages.
• Explain how you directed source-process correction without taking over the source operation.
• Show development of accountable owners and independent reviewers at scale.

Working terms and boundaries

• This permanent full-time role owns substantiation policy, quality and first-year adoption.
• The Director may reject evidence and require remediation but does not hold all correction or write-off approvals.
• Incentives reward residual-risk reduction and durable source correction rather than nominal completion.
• Hybrid work includes concentrated presence for risk reviews, close periods and owner development.
• Assurance relationships and financial interests connected to material balances require conflict disclosure.

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 9 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-PER-2026-VIE-45.