Sara Thomas Email & Phone Number

Cardinia, Vic, Au

Clayton, Victoria, Australia

Recruited as part of the Office of Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President Portfolio Service Team within Financial Resource Management Team (FiRM) to finance business partner IT Services (eSolutions) and Student Services (Monash Connect). Undertake monthly performance analysis, identify drivers for deviations to budget, support long and short-term planning and provide suggestions for corrective action. Provide data analysis to stakeholders to gain an understanding of the financial impact of activity and influence informed decision making.◼️Managed forecasting and annual budgeting to align with expenditure reductions required due to loss of revenue caused by the international border closures restricting students entering Australia. ◼️Worked with the Flexible Service Administration Team (FAST) to enhance understanding of internal casual team charge out rates, analysing profitability, understanding cost drivers and identifying potential savings to increase return on investment.◼️Undertook 2020 budget revision due to impact of COVID-19 to achieve 10% cost reduction and input into redundancy decision making.

Melbourne, Australia

Recruited after a company reorganisation to undertake monthly performance analysis and identify drivers for deviations to budget. Supported Enabling Functions and Marketing with annual budgeting, quarterly forecasts and implementation of monthly results dashboards. Co-ordinated and supported local and offshore Finance teams (IBM, India) to achieve timely month and year-end close. Assisted with Statutory Reporting submissions, improving data collection and supporting documents for analysis where possible.◼️Contributed to Project Helix, the implementation of Prime upgrade (HFM) by submitting account mapping table and TB data (to Head Office, UK) for parallel run, reconciliation of data and identification of variances.

Melbourne, Australia

Recruited due to extensive SAP knowledge as part of a specifically created Manage Close Team to onshore the Finance function to Melbourne from the shared services centre in Kuala Lumpur. ◼️Automated balance sheet and cash forecast reporting using Excel and data extracted from SAP. ◼️Worked with Legal and Environment teams to implement a new process for capturing all environment expenses and supporting documentation to be submitted to Shell for reimbursement.◼️Over a period of 18 months contributed to review, challenge and documentation of month-end close process, resulting in a 1-day reduction prior to migrating offshore to Accenture based in Manilla.

Melbourne, Australia

Recruited in a contract role after a team restructure. Partnered with the Gippsland Joint Venture business to report monthly Maintenance and Logistics operating expenditure for each of the 12 functional locations.◼️Created a model in Excel to help the Superintendent of Maintenance and Logistics to combine the 4-year forecasts and assumptions of each functional location to provide a high-level overview and allow changes to be implemented and tracked easily.

Melbourne, Australia

Recruited in a contract role to reconcile novated lease records. Reconciled each of the 300 employees’ accounts, requesting supporting documents from Human Capital Department and External Finance Lease Company where necessary to ensure data integrity.◼️Implemented automated reporting tool using Excel to calculate an employee’s novated lease balance and the refund due at the end of the lease period.

Wellington & Wairarapa, New Zealand

Joined as Corporate Accountant and gained progressive promotions to Controller (Management Accountant) in April 2011 responsible for overseeing the quality and compliance of timely company reporting. Reported monthly branch office financial results to Corporate Controlling team in Vienna, as well as deviation analysis, cash flow forecast and updated Full Year estimate for New Zealand and Australia. Collated quarterly information for Balanced Score Card presentation, KPI data, comments for Finance, Functional Cost Report and Guarantee reporting for banks.◼️Changed format for Risk Workshops attended by all managers, enabling the process of updating Company Risk Register on a bi-annual basis to be more efficient.◼️Served as part of a small team that implemented SAP over 15 months, participating in workshops (in Vienna), preparing data for migration, user testing and introducing a new time writing module CATs.◼️Reengineered Time Writing process to gain a quick view of project team time and providing training and coaching. ◼️Automated month-end reports to align Sun accounts structure to the Head Office reporting tool (HFM). ◼️Introduced process to collate CAPEX data and narrative and translate to one slide to encourage management ownership of project expenditure.11/2008 to 03/2011: OMV New Zealand Ltd, NZ: Corporate Accountant08/2008 to 11/2008: Capital & Coast District Health Board, NZ: Management Accountant (contract)11/2007 to 07/2008: Desktop Technology Services Ltd, NZ: Assistant Accountant (contract)05/2007 to 08/2007: Ministry of Economic Development, NZ: Treasury Accountant (contract)10/1996 to 03/2007: Offshore Lighting Ltd, UK: Accounting Technician / Office Manager

Cima

Nvq Level 4 (Technician), Accounting

Ba (Hons), Business Studies, 2:1

Higher National Diploma (Hnd), Business Studies