I started working at the ACM in September 2014 and this has been my first job on the accounts receivable side of finance. As the ACM is a university, the credit controller job is a bit different to commercial credit controlling. My main duties include: - Contacting students when their course payments are overdue - Explaining the terms of credit and asking for settlement of the fees - Negotiating payment plans if the students are in financial difficulties - Maintaining student profiles- Processing payments- Visiting students in class to speak about overdue accounts- Keep in close contact with our debt collection agency - Organise exit/interruption meetings with students- Make daily bank reconciliations of Client accounts- Sending emails/letters out to students with overdue accounts- Chase historical debt and work closely with debt collection agencies to trace old debtors- Dealing with all monies taken from the Student Union- Invoicing Students - Work with Student Finance to make sure all tuition fee loans are correctly paid and allocated- Ad Hoc Duties e.g. Franking letters The skills and qualities I need to show when I do this job are :- Good spoken and written communication skills - Have an assertive but tactful manner- Calmness under pressure- Work to strict deadlines- Good negotiation skills- The ability to explain financial matters firmly and clearly- Good mathematical skills- Administrative and computer skills- Good telephone mannerProgrammes/Software used:- Sage- SAP- Eclipse- Insight

I started my career at Hogg Robinson Group in the Hotel Payments department where I had my own portfolio of UK hotels. My day to day role in that department included processing invoices from the hotels and having close contact with all of my hotels credit controllers. By working in a close knit team we worked with the hotels to make sure all HRG clients have had their business trips and extras paid for using a number of different systems. We monitored the amounts by asking for regular statements from our Hotels and working with their finance teams to keep all accounts up to date.Since leaving Hotel Payments I have now joined the Nordic AP department which in some ways are quite similar. In my new department we work with the Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark) and we tend to specialise in either Travel or EMM and overheads. I am now fully trained in all aspects of the department and this allows me to concentrate on my work and do it to my maximum potential. Being in this department can be challenging when I don't understand the language but I have picked up a lot of the the key words and phrases since I joined nearly a year ago. My job role however did recently take a detour as I was asked to return to Hotel payments on a short term basis due to staff shortages. I was asked to return to help with training the new members of the team which I felt quite honoured to have been asked. Returning to the department made me realise just how much I have learnt in the short amount of time I have been with the Nordics, my knowledge of the systems we all use helped me with the training of the new staff as I could teach them things from having the experience in two accounts payable departments.