Here's how you can showcase your mastery of managing intricate financial systems in an interview.

In my current role as assistant management accountant I have helped to create a secondary process to help correct financial transaction errors from a complex retail management system with the use of Excel's Excelorator. Depending on which area of finance you work in having a knowledge of the data source systems will help to address any financial transactional errors from an operational and systems level.

As I started my career since 2013 as a Audit Article under a chartered accountant audit firm. There I worked more than 5 year , there after I joined a UAE based Audit Firm Buchprufer (back office of HLB Hamt , Dubai) for 2 years. In the end of 2020 I resigned and I got new job at Aquarium Lives Centre LLC , Sharjah, I have been appointed as an Audit support and VAT Accountant, then I handled Accounts Payable and other related works , in the 2022 I assigned to coordinate our Indian business with UAE , later in the year 2023 I have went to Bahrain for an Stock audit and internal control of Bahrain Business... this is me so far and going on.....

When I was a country finance manager, I used to implement accounting system to change from Accpac to PeopleSoft ERP. The change impacted not only finance team but also others (e.g. HR, service team). As finance leader, before implementing, we need to clean data and ensure all accounts being reconciled properly before transferring data to the new system. Then, learning the new system on how it works and raise questions and communicate with the development team to ensure the setups are done properly including the testing process.. test as much scenario as you can .. before go live.

In my current role as Accountant and Controller, I have implemented our accounting system, from our parent company to our unit, from SAP R3 to SAP BusinessOne. The biggest challenge was working with many internal stakeholders, as each part, such as the general ledger or asset accounting, was given to a single contact. It was very interesting to understand that I can see my company from every angle.

Some excellent points. Simply put, if you can articulate what you're trying to achieve with the system, it is half the battle. All systems work with an input, process and output. If you know what you want the system to do/what it should be doing ... that's the best way to explain your mastery of the system.

My previous company using Oracle R12 as the main accounting system. OBIEE is part of Oracle to provides detailed report e.g. order, revenue, and margin, backlog report. At territory or regional level, we are using Onestream which similar to Hyperion to retrieve number and produce report to communicate with all leaders.

In my work experience I have used four different ERPs, OS400, eGecko, Sage and SAP BusinessOne. It was very interesting to see that the workflow is always the same, but with different names or commands. One of my hobby-horse is Excel, and the ability to work with it in any ERP is great.

Basically financial KPI would be around: *order, revenue, and margin targets growth of this year compare to annual budget and last year. *SGA% of revenue should be in proper level. *operating income should be achievable with according to margin and control of SGA. *OCF: inventory, AR, AP, other AP and investment should align with company goals.

The most common problem with KPIs is understanding which ones we really need now and in the future. We often use more KPIs than we really need. For example, as an innovative company, we need to use at most KPIs related to liquidity and variance from plan or forecast.

I have recently had the opportunity to create my own processes and improve processes currently used to investigate and correct system interface problems and transactional data failures. To enable me to do this one of the things I have found useful is the use of source data writings i.e. systems output prior to interface to data migration as I have found that the errors can sometimes lie at the operational level which are then to be investigated and corrected by finance. This hasn't really helped to solve the errors as errors of omission at operational level are common, but to create a system or process to efficiently and effectively solve these problems at a financial management level has been my aim.

I used to manage to consolidate a report for Asia Pacific region which involves many countries and contributors for their input information. Originally I build templates and placed them in shared drive. Although I setup Excel to allow more than 1 people to work on the same file.. It didn’t work well. Later I learned that I can share my files to all using OneDrive and all of them can work on my files at the same time and I can see their movements during my sharing. Once data completed I can stop sharing and continue my work. This is amazing. OneDrive helps me solve issues with too many parties engaged in the same files at the same time.

*Make it as simple as you can with clear and concise manner. *Use the format they always familiar with. *Remove those too details and complicated one. You may keep it as backup information but avoid to present them upfront and confuse them.

Always highlight your commitment to learning and growing. Talk about how you keep up with new financial rules and tech changes. Mention any extra courses or certificates you've done to get better at managing financial systems. This shows you're serious about your job and can adapt to any changes in the company.

I agree, continuous learning and development should be considered as important by potential employers as it shows candidates to have the zeal to progress in their career and the new organisation which only benefits them. On the flip side as a candidate, having an employer who is interested in your future and progression via learning and development is a green flag for a potential new employer