Education Entity Close and Payables Control — Interim Finance AVP

The mandate

The interim AVP will occupy a bounded operational finance seat, not a capital-strategy or CFO role. The task is to make routine exceptions visible and decide within delegated policy rather than passing every unresolved item to the finance director, bringing together entity close, accounts payable and management cash reporting.

The assignment starts on 19 October 2026 for nine months, with permanent recruitment running in parallel. Bengaluru is the primary base and education-site visits are planned for source-document walkthroughs. Initial work concentrates on the opening close and payment queues; the final six weeks are reserved for successor operation of the documented routines.

Handover succeeds when entity reconciliations, vendor payment exceptions and fee-receipt differences have accountable owners and an understandable status. The successor must produce one close pack and cash dashboard using approved definitions, without silently fixing discrepancies through manual offsets. Overdue matters may remain open if their evidence, approval boundary and escalation date are honestly recorded.

The AVP may direct existing operations staff, enforce document requirements and approve routine budgeted payment processing up to ₹3 lakh within the established dual-approval workflow. Accounting-policy changes, tax positions, new banking arrangements and permanent recruitment stay with the finance director. Disputed invoices cannot be settled through an informal promise or an unsupported journal.

The remit excludes fundraising, institution pricing decisions and statutory audit opinions. The rate recognises experienced operational control and availability, not assumed enterprise-level executive authority. Five working days weekly are expected; extraordinary travel or a materially expanded entity perimeter requires written agreement. Conversion is not promised, and the permanent search remains a separate process.

What you will own

• Establish the close exception register with source references, accountable preparers and review dates, separating missing documents from genuine accounting judgement that requires director approval.
• Decide routine vendor payment readiness within delegated policy, documenting disputed invoices and preventing urgent requests from bypassing approved evidence and dual-review requirements.
• Reconcile fee receipts to entity ledgers and cash reporting, identifying timing differences without assuming responsibility for admissions pricing or collection enforcement outside finance.
• Approve operational management dashboards only after definitions, source refresh and unexplained balances have been checked against the underlying close and payment records.
• Direct existing finance staff through a weekly work queue and escalation threshold, making overdue review decisions visible instead of treating processed volume as sufficient control evidence.
• Validate routine tax-compliance preparation with authorised reviewers, ensuring due-date and source-document exceptions are escalated without adopting new tax positions independently.
• Transfer close and payables routines through a successor-led cycle, accepted procedure notes and a signed record of open director-level judgements and payment disputes.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate practical entity finance operations leadership at manager, AVP or comparable bounded scope. Show a close or payment exception you personally resolved within delegated authority, identifying what remained with a finance director. Provide the reconciliation, review comments and escalation decision that distinguish routine correction from a tax, policy or disputed-payment judgement requiring authorised specialist input.
• Provide sound Indian accounting, accounts-payable and routine tax-compliance understanding, preferably supported by chartered accountancy or an equivalent professional finance qualification. Bring a redacted reconciliation illustrating source evidence, reviewer comments and the eventual disposition. Candidates must recognise when a policy or tax position requires specialist review rather than extending their own operational approval authority.
• Show useful management reporting that connected entity books, receipts and payment obligations without hiding unexplained differences. Explain one dashboard definition changed after source testing and how the correction affected decisions. Analytical tool familiarity is welcome, but a visual output without maintainable definitions, access controls and finance reconciliation will not meet this requirement.
• Evidence four or more relevant years with genuine multi-entity operational responsibility and a handover another person could execute. Describe queue prioritisation, review independence and an unresolved issue transferred honestly. Supply a close calendar and exception register showing how another reviewer distinguished entity-specific GST, payment and cutoff issues and preserved dual approval during peak workloads.

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 7 October 2026. Mandate reference PCT-INT-2026-IND-25.