Finance Manager - Budgeting & MIS
Eagle Hills Properties LLC
Total years of experience :23 years, 3 Months
- Reporting to Finance Director
- Formulate and manage budgeting process of the Group including country offices
- Coordinate with country offices and ensure budget timelines are adhered to
- Review and analyse accuracy of budgets provided
- Provide high level comments to senior management on submissions to aid budget review and approval by budget committee
- Coordinate internally with all relevant functional heads in formulation of corporate office budget
- Review of monthly financial statements and analyse with approved budget
- Interpret and prepare monthly commentary on financial performance variances identified
* Introduced the importance of monthly reporting of financial performance in reasonable time to business unit, thereby aiding sr. management to proactively take decision to ensure minimal deviation from budgets.
* Emphasized importance of proper project accounting purpose in terms of budgetary approval, scrutiny of invoices received from Project (Commercial) department by ensuring costing by QS team is done as per FIDIC ’99, ensuring all project accruals (for uncertified works) is done as part of monthly finalization of accounts.
* Contributed in structuring of accounting practices.
* Improved the reporting efficiency by 60%.
* Executed & implemented annual budgeting exercise and periodic forecasting (never done before) across business unit.
* Successfully improved statutory audit timeline by 86%.
* Conducted routine valuation of investment and development property portfolio of circa US$200M.
* Managed trading property portfolio of US$144M in conjunction with Delivery Team to maintain cash inflows.
* Improved year on year operating profit from US$0.9M to US$4.8M by tapping newer revenue streams.
* Reduced finance cost by circa US$4.2M approximately 16% in 2014.
* Successfully saved over US$8.5M through tight internal control on operational spends and reduction of finance cost (decrease by 16% as compared to 2013).
Reporting to Senior Finance Manager
• In charge of accounting and financial management of Overheads & Exhibitions of the Cultural Department.
• Monthly / Quarterly reporting pack of department overheads.
• Monthly Exhibition status reports to project managers.
• Single handedly responsible for formulation of budgets and forecasts for department’s Overhead & Exhibition budget US$55Mn
• Monthly & Quarterly Cash Flow Projections
• Financial Management of special projects entrusted by the Executive Council.
• Preparation of Treasury reports to senior management of Cultural Department & TDIC Finance.
• Setting up of internal controls and formulation of policies and procedures for inventory management & retail business of Manarat Al Saadiyat business.
Key Achievements:
• Streamlined inventory management by brining accounting of sales in-house.
• Successfully helped Visitor Services Coordinator in performing sales with hardly any error by introducing bar-coding of inventory.
• Super User for Oracle E-business Suite and Alpha Pro retail application.
• Enhanced relation between other departments by stepping up to mutually acceptable timelines and ensuring deliverables are met by the team.
• Brought about 10-15% savings in costs across exhibitions ensuring deliverables were not compromised.
• Re-engineered payment process resulting in over 50% reduction in payment processing time.
• Manage day to day activities of Payables Accountant, Project Accountant, Receivables Accountant and Cash Office functions of Cultural Department.
• Transition of accounting & budgeting from Great Plains 10 to Oracle Finance.
• Transition of accounting functions from TDIC Finance to in-house.
• Review monthly reconciliations which were formerly done by TDIC Finance.
• Training Administrators on Oracle.
Reporting to General Manager Finance
• In charge of accounting and financial management of Festival Centre, the retail portfolio of AFGRE generating over US$100Mn of revenue mainly through big boxes, line shops, specialty leasing and other revenue segments.
• Instrumental in introducing internal controls, policies and procedures across various departments resulting in cost and resource savings to business units.
• Enhancing finance’s role in business decision making process.
• Responsible for managing team of 6 accountants involved in inter-company transactions of 15 companies of DFC, AFGRE and Al-Futtaim Real Estate and preparing weekly and monthly reports.
• In charge for finalization of accounts prepared by Shared Services Finance for 4 companies and 8 business units.
• Closely involved in preparation of capital and operating budgets and presentations for all operating concerns of DFC and AFGRE operations.
• Carried out internal audit on Specialty Leasing Department and Concierge Department to ensure compliance of standards.
• Involved in setting up process of accounting application for Owners Association for Residential Sales.
• Introduced weekly and monthly reporting for Al Areesh Community Center for business head.
Key Achievements:
• Improved ledger management on SAP by providing training on recording transactions. This also proved to meet forecast and budget requirements apart from finalization of monthly accounts well before the deadline.
• By being customer centric was able to achieve confidence of business in favor of finance department’s outlook in decision making.
• Identified and plugged expenses thereby reducing operating costs by nearly 28% in certain core areas of Mall Management activities.
• Adhoc audit to ensure business compliance with policies / procedures.
• Re-engineered procurement of IT services for Admin department resulting in 15-18% reduction in costs by AED0.75Mn.
• Formulated purchase policy and procedures in order to better manage documentation and improve process efficiency.
• Instrumental in reducing Inter-company outstanding from over US$15Mn above 60 days to US$3.6Mn between 0 to 60 days bracket resulting in reducing finance cost to businesses.
• Implemented daily and weekly sales report for Al Areesh Community Center and Concierge Department.
• Implementation, testing and training of Business Planning and Consolidation for SAP, a web based interface tool for 23 companies of DFC and AFGRE.
A team player handled revenue accounting, accounts payable, accounts receivables, general ledger accounting, finalization of accounts, preparation of audit packs from inception for DFC group of companies & Al-Futtaim Group subsidiaries.
Reporting to Finance Manager
• Responsible for revenue accounting, handling of accounts receivables, accounts payables of Al Badia Golf Course Resort, the first operating business of DFC. Preparing of capital and operating budgets and monitoring of inventory.
• Process general ledger accounting, treasury functions and accounts payable of DFC companies.
• Finalisation of accounts for DFC & Al-Futtaim Private companies.
• Prepare audit packs of DFC companies for client.
• Assisting Finance Manager in preparing Service Lease Agreements (SLA) and service specifications in Six Sigma formats.
Key Achievements:
• Key personnel to perform consolidation on Enterprise Controlling - Consolidation System (EC-CS) on SAP 4.7
• Training new members on accounting practices, systems and Al-Futtaim Group policies.
• Assist line manager in process re-engineering.
• Implementation of REFX, the SAP real estate module for residential operation of DFC and qualified as super user.
Reporting to Finance Controller
• Handling of ledger accounting, accounts payable, accounts receivables, fixed asset accounting, inventory management.
• Finalisation of monthly accounts.
• Preparation of capital and operating budgets and forecasts.
• Drafting of accounting and operations procedures manual.
• Prepare daily and monthly sales report for management, weekly debtors ageing statement and monthly inventory reports.
• Tracking of consignment stock sales.
Key Achievements:
• Improved inventory management through proper controls and procedures.
• Setting up of online billing process.
Evolved from data entry level to start my career for beverage and hotel & catering division to handling costing, cash management, inventory management of beverage and hotel & catering services. Independently handled and reported beverage division and hotel & catering division.
Key Achievements:
• Automated billing for businesses not linked to Crux resulting in resource efficiency.
• Automation of reports required by management on Crux.
- Vice Chairman of BBM Department - Class Representative - Internship with Tamil Nadu Industrial Investment Company as part of the course curriculum to understand industry financing done for manufacturing firms in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu - Market Research on consumer responsiveness on living in apartments versus townhouses or independent villas. - With NPCC for a 1 month management training program.
Passed with First Class & finished in top 5 in the Commerce Division (Boys) School's top scorer in Economics