Finance Associate - GM&C Trading
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: Coventry Store Support Centre - Ansty Park and Home, Coventry, CV7 9RD
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Finance & Business Development
Closing date: 22 September 2025
Requisition ID: 400019698
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. For a FTSE business, we move incredibly fast. When we’re not handling projects, we’re helping all corners of the wider group with what they’re trying to achieve. And around here, you can see the results of your work as soon as you walk into a store, which gives you a real sense of purpose and responsibility. Better still, the team around you will listen to your ideas and opinions, and you’ll have every chance to try something new. The sheer scale and complexity of our set-up means there’s always something else around the corner, and we’ll help and support you every step of the way. We’re trusted to get on with it. So get ready to make things happen here.
Division/Dept.
Finance/GM&C Trading
Location
Ansty Park, Coventry
Reporting to
Finance Analyst – Supplier Funding
In a nutshell
We have many different types of funding arrangements with suppliers that each provide unique complexities towards reaching our aim of recognising, collecting and accounting for funding as effectively as possible. This role will support the accounting, forecasting, reporting and collection of supplier income and be a key point of contact for day-to-day supplier income related activity.
This role will simplify our existing processes, improve the reporting of funding to enable a better understanding of trading performance and develop best practices in supplier income accounting.
This role will support Commercial teams to understand and ensure that they are engaged and abide by the rules and regulations around supplier funding accounting processes.
What the role is accountable for
- Produce weekly reporting on funding aged debt, take initiative to understand this analysis and follow up with Commercial (Buying) teams, other Finance departments or suppliers as appropriate, helping to ensure funding deals are collected on a timely basis and that the company’s cash flow remains as strong as possible. Gain in-depth understanding of the process with the larger, more complex suppliers and work towards simplifying this where possible.
- Review weekly funding reversals, asking appropriate questions to ensure robustness, and operate weekly key control of approval requests. Maintaining a robust audit trail and maintaining oversight of reversals.
- Own and perform key reconciliations at period end, offering timely support to the Finance Analyst with period end processes and investigating issues and take ownership for the periodic cost actualisation process, ensuring that costs are appropriately allocated to the relevant areas in the business.
- Responsible for the weekly EPI (Earned Promotional Income) record to ensure accurate reporting of supplier income on a weekly basis to margin. Support with queries from the Commercial teams on weekly funding. Play a key role in the external and internal audit processes plus other control requirements, such as agreeing underlying funding data to the entries in the ledger on a sample basis.
- Bridge the gap between trading teams and Argos Trading Finance through excellent stakeholder management and regular interactions with the traders. Liaise with other relevant Finance teams (such as FinOps and Gross Margin) to ensure excellent working relationships and timely resolution of issues.
- Help drive the E-Forms process for Supplier Funding team through detailed analysis; share reporting with the Commercial (Buying) teams on the key metrics to encourage the appropriate actions to be taken swiftly. Assisting with any queries on the E-Forms portal and processes.
- Take a pro-active approach towards identifying improvements and changes to the supplier income process and offer opinions and solutions to existing challenges. Support changing behaviours in the business through supporting strategic objectives within Supplier Funding and the wider team.
What you need to know and show
- Curiosity beyond traditional finance boundaries and ability to understand key business drivers
- Analytical skills
- Strong Excel and data manipulation skills
- Attention to detail
- Ability to build strong relationships with stakeholders
- Attend and contribute to key meetings as required
- A good communicator that works well in a team, sharing insight and lessons learnt with the Finance community.
- The job holder must effectively support the Finance Analyst to enable them to articulate the key issues and headlines from Supplier Income to senior stakeholders.
- Preferred (but not essential) to be studying, or planning to study, towards a professional accounting qualification
Directly or indirectly manages
- No Direct reports
Support we will provide
- Potential support to study towards a professional accounting qualification.
- Access to personal development tools, e.g. Bitesize talks, online self-development tools, internal mentoring, etc.
- All specific training for the role.
Grade
- C3
Please note: This role profile is aimed at describing the core output that should be achieved in this role. It is not intended to include specific tasks, temporary activities or projects to recognise flexibility in a changing context.
We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new - whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them: Please note, due to the volume of applications we receive, our roles may close early.
Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 5% of salary, depending on how we perform.
Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme.
Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.
Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).
