Strong financial controls. Smooth financial operations. Delivering at a fast pace.
Accounts Receivable Executive
£29,000- £31,000 + benefits + study support (if applicable)
Reports to: Senior Finance Manager (Accounts Payable & Receivable)
Grade : P1
Directorate : Chief Operating Office
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Full time 35 hours per week
Location: Stratford, London . Office-based with high flexibility (1-2 days per week in the office)
Visa sponsorship: You must be eligible to work in the UK to apply for this vacancy. Cancer Research UK is not able to offer visa sponsorship.
Closing date: 24 August 2025, 23:55
This vacancy may close earlier if a high volume of applications is received or once a suitable candidate is found, therefore we strongly recommend that you apply early to avoid disappointment. If you require more time to apply as part of a reasonable adjustment, please contact recruitment@cancer.org.uk as soon as possible.
Recruitment process: One competency-based interview
Interview date: We will be shortlisting on a rolling basis, please do not delay in applying.
How do I apply? We operate an anonymised shortlisting process in our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion. CVs are required for all applications; but we won’t be able to view them until we invite you for an interview. Instead, we ask you to fully complete the work history section of the online application form for us to be able to assess you quickly, fairly, and objectively.
At Cancer Research UK, we exist to beat cancer.
We are professionals with purpose, beating cancer every day. But we need to go much further and much faster. That’s why we’re looking for someone talented, someone who wants to develop their skills, someone like you.
Cancer Research UK’s Finance team’s credibility and professionalism in handling £684m in income fundraised by public generosity are essential to the smooth running of our organisation. The Accounts Receivable (AR) team play a vital role in the Finance team’s mission by ensuring that income is accurately processed, posted, and collected promptly. By managing aged debt, maintaining robust sales ledger controls, and supporting cash flow across the organisation, the AR team helps maximise the financial resources that fund our life-saving research.
As an Accounts Receivable (AR) Executive, you will support the Senior AP & AR Finance Manager in overseeing daily AR processes, ensuring service level agreements and key performance indicators (KPIs) are met. This will involve managing aged debt and the sales ledger (including income processing and debt management), while maintaining and implementing robust financial controls and continuous improvements across AR. Furthermore, you will play a key role in collaborating with internal stakeholders to recover income proactively and handle customer queries. This will involve providing training, guidance, development, and support to end-users across Cancer Research UK on AR processes.
If you are at the start of your finance career or are part-qualified, we can offer you study support for a KAPLAN apprenticeship. If you are a proactive AR professional with strong sales ledger, aged debt, customer, and stakeholder management, we’d love for you to join our mission.
What will I be doing?
Overseeing day-to-day Accounts Receivable (AR) service-level agreements. This includes:
Ensuring that all AR Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and targets are met.
Being an expert on our ‘Order to Cash’ transactional processes, ensuring effective control management for sales invoice generation.
Supporting with the cash collection process to maximise our cash flow.
Ensuring key AR financial controls are adhered to.
Corporate Income Processing:
Ensuring the timely and accurate posting of all income interfaces weekly (including Legacy systems, Siebel, Retail adjustments, RAG income, and Online income reconciliation).
Please note we will be migrating our CRM from Siebel to Salesforce next year.
Collaborating closely with the Supporter Income team to ensure all incoming funds are processed and posted promptly.
This includes providing daily bank statements, resolving posting errors, and ensuring all necessary adjustments are completed to facilitate accurate and timely bank reconciliations.
Maintain a clear understanding of bank accounts within Siebel production to ensure accurate income processing.
This includes breaking down accounts by product and transaction type (such as VAT payments, Gift Aid, and Legacy income) to support precise financial reporting and reconciliation.
Taking ownership of foreign income accounting, collaborating closely with Supporter Income to improve and automate this process.
Assisting with the opening of sales ledger mail and batching, and banking of cheques.
Accounts Receivable & Debt Management:
Owning the sales ledger function, which includes:
Proactively managing aged debt in collaboration with internal stakeholders, ensuring that this is appropriately chased, provided for, or written off, and appropriately escalated as required.
Approving sales orders via Business World.
Weekly income receipting.
Managing customer communications (such as statements and reminder letters).
Ensuring the accuracy and quality of customer data within Business World to support effective financial operations and customer engagement.
Maintaining, tracking, and improving the KPIs within set targets assigned by the AP & AR Manager.
Delivering training, guidance, development, and support to end-users and internal stakeholders across Cancer Research UK.
Finance Helpdesk & Customer Management:
Handling customer queries relating to sales invoices and receipt of cash, liaising with colleagues as appropriate.
Managing Finance Helpdesk enquiries from customers and end users, seeking support and escalating as appropriate.
Ensuring queries are logged and responded to within SLAs and are effectively resolved.
Seeking customer feedback to ensure we are constantly learning and improving.
Providing sales ledger training to colleagues and developing and maintaining our training programme for new starters.
What are you looking for?
Experienced Accounts Receivable professional who has operated within busy AR functions in medium to large organisations.
Demonstrable success in managing aged debt through a proactive approach to income recovery, with a solid understanding of customer and supplier relationship management.
Strong sales ledger management with a continuous improvement mindset and knowledge of AR best practices and controls.
Effective time management and organisational skills with a proven ability to meet deadlines and set KPIs, while maintaining accurate attention to detail.
Strong customer focus with a solutions-driven mindset that ensures effective query resolution.
Comfortable learning how to deliver training to end-users and colleagues.
Our organisation values are designed to guide all that we do.
Bold: Act with ambition, courage and determination
Credible: Act with rigour and professionalism
Human: Act to have a positive impact on people
Together: Act inclusively and collaboratively
We’re looking for people who can believe in and embody these organisation values and can use them to drive forward progress against our mission to beat cancer.
If you’re interested in applying and excited about working with us but are unsure if you have the right skills and experience we’d still love to hear from you.
What will I gain?
We create a working environment that supports your wellbeing and provide a generous benefits package, a wide range of career and personal development opportunities and high-quality tools. Our policies and processes enable you to improve your work-life balance, take positive steps in your career and achieve your personal wellbeing goals.
You can explore our benefits by visiting our careers web page .
Additional information
For more information about working with us please visit our website or contact us at recruitment@cancer.org.uk .
For more updates on our work and careers, follow us on: LinkedIn , Facebook , Instagram , X and YouTube .
Our vision is to create a charity where everyone feels like they belong, benefits from and participates in, the work we do. We actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and cultures, in particular those from ethnic minority backgrounds who are currently under-represented.
We want to see every candidate performing at their best throughout the job application process, interview process and whilst at work. We therefore ask you to inform us of any concerns you have or any adjustments you might need to enable this to happen. Please contact recruitment@cancer.org.uk or 0 20 3469 8400 as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, we are unable to recruit anyone below the age of 18, so that we can protect young people from health & safety and safeguarding risks.