Do you know what a financial controller is? What are their functions? What skills does a person from the financial world have?
In some ways, the financial controller can be a complicated role to define and that’s why we tell you what a financial controller is and what their main day-to-day functions are within an organisation. Don’t miss it!
What is a financial controller?
The financial controller must be able to pay close attention to all the little details and have a global vision of the company. What is the role, objectives and responsibilities of a financial controller? Actually, a financial controller is the person who is in charge of the financial management and control of a company.
Their main tasks include supervising the annual accounts of the company, managing the treasury and drawing up budgets in accordance with the analyses previously carried out, as well as the “financial health” of the organisation. In terms of skills, you must have accounting and administrative knowledge, as this is a multidisciplinary position with a high level of responsibility to ensure the financial well-being and stability of the company.
The main duties of a financial controller
The functions of a financial controller are very varied and, depending on the type of company and the sector in which it is located, can be summarised as follows:
1. Supervising and analysing the results and annual accounts.
One of the main functions of a financial controller is to analyse and supervise the annual accounts of the company with the help of the elaboration of reports with the indicators and tools that best suit the needs.
Thus, after analysing these accounts and results, they can establish the economic objectives to be met by the company and how to execute them, focusing on the company’s cash flow and funds so that decisions can be made in line with the company’s needs.
2. Detect errors and failures
The controller must check the actions of the finance department to confirm that no errors or financial misstatements have occurred in the company’s accounts. He also analyses the financial statements and designs a contingency plan with economic and financial resources and indications for each case that may arise during the activity.
3. Search for control tools
It is essential to have methodological, technological or IT tools to validate and control the company’s activity.
4. Planning business objectives and analysing strategic decisions
One of the key points is to plan which economic objectives the company has to meet in the short, medium and long term. At the same time, it has to be able to analyse strategic decisions in order to transform or change the direction of the company’s management strategy to ensure as far as possible that these decisions will be positive and beneficial.
5. Linking the different departments
As you can see, a financial controller is the person who serves as a link between the various departments, usually between management and accounting and finance, coordinating and supervising the tasks and work of these related departments.
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A financial controller works above all to achieve the best financial management and, in recent years, thanks to digital transformation, their work has been simplified by working with software or applications that allow them to digitise and automate financial expenditure tasks.
To this end, XPENDOR is the ideal app for any controller when it comes to digitising their employees’ corporate expenses. By simply taking a photo of the receipt or invoice, the application will manage it immediately without errors and without loss of documentation; saving time when managing company travel anywhere, anytime and on any device.
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