SEND Business Support Officer

JOB TITLE: SEND Business Support Officer

LOCATION: Ealing (Some remote working)

PAY RATE: 18.86 paye / 25.22 umbrella (per hour)

DURATION/HOURS: 3 months (possible extension)/ Mon-Fri 35 hours

START DATE: ASAP

Role purpose:

• Service support to SENAS, SEN-Invoicing and Annual Review team, and being a frontline point of contact for callers into the SENAS duty line service
• To be support, under the guidance of the SENAS Business Support Lead for the efficient and effective provision of a comprehensive resource monitoring and control function of High Needs Block funding, including mainstream and special schools' revenue arrangements, in accordance with statutory requirements and the Council's policies.
• To contribute to developing and maintaining funding processes and procedures under the instruction of the SENAS Business Support Lead.
• To effectively and accurately use integrated financial and database systems
• To provide support to the SENAS Business Support Lead, to facilitate the efficient and effective running of the resource monitoring.

Key accountabilities:

• Responsible for monitoring and amending transport budget projections in liaison with Transport team, Budget Managers and SENAS Business Support Lead.
• Responsible for raising and maintaining purchase orders (POs), the scrutiny of invoices to identify discrepancies and goods receipt of transport and SENAS payments.
• Raise purchase orders for private contractors for the provision of school transport, checking invoices against bookings, cancellations, and returns. Update the Business World finance system; monitor the approval and release of invoices. Liaise with payments team in relation to payment of cheques. Act on discrepancies on payments, escalate accordingly
• Raise ad hoc requisitions upon request and manage the PO, accordingly, ensure that supplier is informed of PO details in timely manner so as not to delay allocation of resource
• Request details, set up suppliers on Business World and follow up authorisation
• Responsible for the collation of fees and pupil information. Obtain costs of out borough and independent special school placements and provide these when requested
• Communicate effectively with suppliers, accounts payable and debtor's enquiries as the first point of call, ensuring effective liaison with other Local Authorities (LA), other departments, schools, parents, professionals, suppliers, and potentially difficult/distressed clients/customers.
• Actively contributing to the mitigation of risks associated with not maximising income and not minimising Council expenditure.
• Responsible for timely and accurate payments to suppliers, control and reconciliation whilst remaining in effective liaison with the internal services, Accounts Payable and Debtors Teams.
• Responsible for the monitoring and processing of ad hoc claims and provide support for claimants.
• Responsible for the distribution of information to schools, parents and suppliers and updating and uploading resource allocations, schedules to gatekeeping, and other electronic systems.
• Identify and process journal transfers when necessary and raise upon request from SENAS Business Support Lead.
• Identify and process payment requests when necessary and raise upon request from SENAS Business Support Lead.
• Responsible for raising invoices to debtors using the ASH debtors' system on a termly, annually, ad-hoc basis or upon request from the SENAS Business Support Lead.
• Contribute, under the guidance of the SENAS Business Support Lead to quarterly reconciliation of general ledger entries over High Needs block funding. As well as comprehensive year end reconciliation and miscoding correction process
• To process referrals into services, requests for assessment, service requests, and complaints within statutory timescales, including scanning, logging and copying information; using the SEN database, service spreadsheets and ESCAN shared folders to input, track, record and research cases; selecting and using workflows, following through relevant actions; alerting senior officers to any discrepancies /inaccuracies in data or processes.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience:

• Experience of working with financial procedures and processes.
• The ability to communicate effectively both in person and in writing with staff, external agencies, clients and their representatives.
• The ability to deal effectively and sensitively with queries and to provide appropriate advice as required.
• Experience of dealing with high volume workloads, ensuring attention to detail and accuracy is maintained.
• The ability to work effectively as part of a team, ensuring that targets and deadlines are met
• Experience of using mainframe financial systems and other related software
• To demonstrate ability to manipulate and work with numerical data
• Experience in creating and maintaining spreadsheet software, in particular MS Excel.
• Experience of using mainframe financial systems and other related software, including intermediate to advanced knowledge of spreadsheet software, in particular MS Excel as well as databases is desirable

Adecco acts as an employment agency for permanent recruitment and an employment business for the supply of temporary workers. The Adecco Group UK & Ireland is an Equal Opportunities Employer.

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