Position title
Finance Business Partner - Commercial Finance Roles
Description

Location: London and UK-wide, mostly hybrid
Salary: £60,000–£85,000 depending on scale and the seniority of the stakeholders
Interim rate: from £400 a day
Basis: Permanent, interim and fixed-term
Start: Ongoing — we are building our commercial finance panel

Finance business partnering is the part of finance that has grown fastest over the past decade, and it is also the most inconsistently defined. Some businesses use the title for a management accountant who attends operational meetings. Others use it for someone who genuinely shapes commercial decisions before they are made. We are interested in people who have done the second, and we are honest with candidates about which version a given role actually is.

The distinguishing feature is direction of travel. Management accounting explains what happened; business partnering influences what happens next. That means the work is as much about relationships and timing as it is about analysis — being in the room when a pricing decision is taken rather than reporting on it a month later.

It is also a role that fails in a specific and predictable way: where the underlying numbers are not trusted, no amount of partnering rescues it. Our guide to the forward and backward halves of finance reporting covers why, and how many business partners a function actually needs covers the structural question.

Responsibilities

The remit differs by business, but a genuine business partnering role typically includes:

  • Owning the financial relationship with one or more parts of the business — a division, a region, a product line or a function
  • Building and maintaining the forecast for that area, and being accountable for its accuracy
  • Pricing analysis and margin management, including the decisions that follow from both
  • Business case development and appraisal for investment, headcount and new initiatives
  • Scenario modelling and sensitivity analysis to support commercial decisions before they are taken
  • Challenging assumptions in commercial proposals — constructively, and with evidence
  • Translating financial information for people who are not accountants, and translating operational reality back into the numbers
  • Identifying cost and margin opportunities the business has not asked about
  • Supporting the budget cycle for your area, including the negotiation that goes with it
  • Working alongside the management accounting team without duplicating it
  • Post-implementation review — did the business case deliver, and what does that tell us next time
Qualifications

Essential

  • Qualified accountant — CIMA, ACCA or ACA
  • Demonstrable commercial finance experience, not solely management accounting with a business partnering title
  • Strong modelling capability and the judgement to know which assumptions actually matter
  • Credibility with senior non-finance stakeholders — this is the part that cannot be taught quickly and the part most appointments turn on
  • Willing to disagree with a commercial proposal and hold the position under pressure
  • Able to work from imperfect data and say clearly how imperfect it is

Desirable

  • Sector depth in SaaS or subscription businesses, retail and e-commerce, manufacturing, healthcare or professional services
  • Familiarity with the metrics that matter in your sector — ARR, NRR and CAC in SaaS; contribution and like-for-like in retail; utilisation and recovery in services
  • Experience partnering a sales or operations function specifically, which is harder than partnering a support function
  • Power BI, Tableau, Anaplan, Adaptive or similar planning and visualisation tools
  • Private equity-backed experience, where the commercial questions arrive with more urgency
  • Experience of building a business partnering function from scratch rather than joining an established one
Job Benefits
  • £60,000–£85,000 on permanent roles, with bonus commonly 10–20% at this level
  • Interim day rates from £400
  • Honest scoping. We establish before approaching anyone whether a role is genuine business partnering or management accounting with a different title — and we say which
  • Roles across sectors rather than one vertical, so you can move sideways as well as up
  • Clear positioning on stakeholder seniority, which is what actually determines whether the role is interesting
  • A recruiter who understands the distinction. Every conversation is with a Chartered Accountant

Contacts

Send your CV through the form on this page, or register with us to be matched against roles as they arise. Every conversation is handled personally by Adrian Lawrence FCA, a Fellow of the ICAEW and a former listed-company Finance Director.

No fee to candidates, ever, and your details are never sent to an employer without your consent.

Related reading: the Finance Business Partner job description, how many business partners you need, the FP&A career path and the finance career paths hub.

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Management Accountant - Permanent, Interim and Part-Time
Employment Type
Full-time
Beginning of employment
1st November 2026
Duration of employment
Perm
Industry
Hospitality
Job Location
London, South East, United Kingdom
Working Hours
9-5
Base Salary
£60,000-£85,000 Per year
Date posted
September 29, 2026
Valid through
October 31, 2026
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Position: Finance Business Partner - Commercial Finance Roles

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