Commercial Finance Manager
About Us
We are on a mission to make healthy living easy. Our philosophy is simple: every mouthful of food should be both nourishing and delicious. We have spent years creating and curating the highest-quality health foods, ensuring they are free from hidden sugars, additives, and unnecessary processing while remaining affordable and accessible. As a privately owned, self-funded, and profitable direct-to-consumer brand, we have achieved double-digit year-on-year growth, and we’re scaling fast. Having served more than 300,000 customers and been recognised as one of the UK’s Top 100 fastest-growing founder-led businesses, we have ambitious plans to double our revenue in the coming years. To support that, we are looking for a Commercial Finance Manager to bring greater clarity, control and confidence to our numbers. This is a pivotal role – an opportunity to be a trusted commercial partner to our visionary Founder and help steer us through rapid growth. The ideal candidate will embody and champion our core values:
? We Always Deliver – Taking ownership and ensuring high standards in everything we do.
? We Have a Growth Mindset – Continuously learning, adapting, and improving.
? We Are Accountable – Taking responsibility for actions and outcomes.
? We Care – Genuinely caring about our team, customers, and mission.
Do you have the commercial curiosity, rigour and drive to bring financial clarity to a fast-growing company alongside the Founder and a passionate team? If so, read on – this could be the opportunity for you.
The Opportunity
We are seeking an experienced Commercial Finance Manager to own the weekly financial truth of the business. This is not a traditional bookkeeping position – it is a hands-on role for someone who wants to understand how the whole business works, identify opportunities and risks, and help shape better commercial decisions. You will ensure the Founder and leadership team always have a clear, accurate and forward-looking understanding of cash, profitability, gross and contribution margin, product and channel performance, stock and working capital, labour efficiency, financial risks and forecast performance. Success in this role means the Founder no longer has to chase numbers, piece together reports or discover financial issues too late. This position is designed for a commercial, execution-focused finance professional who can turn financial and operational data into management information that drives faster, better decisions. The role is initially structured around three days per week (part-time, hybrid, based in Reading), but it has the potential to grow in scope and responsibility as our company develops. It reports to the Founder and works closely with operations, production, demand planning, warehouse, dispatch, customer care and our external accountants. The salary is £30,000–£36,000 per annum (approximately £50,000–£60,000 full-time equivalent).
What We Need From Our Commercial Finance Manager
Cash Flow & Working Capital
• Own and maintain a rolling 13-week cash-flow forecast, updating actual and forecast cash movements each week.
• Provide clear visibility of upcoming cash pressures, payment commitments and funding requirements.
• Track customer receipts, platform payouts, supplier payments, VAT, payroll and other significant cash movements.
• Maintain a forward supplier-payment schedule and identify potential cash shortfalls early, recommending actions.
• Monitor working capital and identify opportunities to improve cash conversion and inform decisions on payment timing, stock purchasing and capital allocation.
Management Accounts & Reporting
• Produce accurate and timely monthly management accounts – P&L, balance sheet and supporting reconciliations.
• Ensure all major balance-sheet accounts are understood and reconciled, and explain monthly performance clearly to the Founder and leadership team.
• Identify material variances, unusual movements and areas requiring action.
• Produce a concise weekly Finance Command Report covering bank position, 13-week cash forecast, revenue by channel, gross and contribution margin, marketing efficiency, labour as a % of revenue, supplier payments due, VAT exposure, stock and working-capital risks, forecast changes, anomalies and key decisions required.
• Work closely with the external accountants to ensure reliable information and year-end readiness, improving the speed and quality of month-end.
Budgeting, Forecasting & Commercial Analysis
• Build and maintain the annual company budget and rolling revenue, cost, profit and cash forecasts.
• Compare actuals against budget and forecast, investigating and explaining material variances.
• Maintain appropriate downside, expected and upside scenarios and support longer-term financial planning.
• Provide financial analysis and ROI / business cases for new products, machinery, hires, marketing investments and commercial opportunities – challenging assumptions constructively.
• Help the leadership team understand the financial consequences of decisions before commitments are made, bringing commercial discipline without slowing the business down.
Channel, Product & Margin Profitability
• Provide clear financial reporting across our principal channels – Shopify, Subscriptions, TikTok Shop, Amazon, Wholesale and Contract Manufacturing.
• For each channel, monitor revenue, discounts, refunds, platform fees, advertising, fulfilment, courier costs, cost of goods, contribution margin and net profitability.
• Maintain accurate product-costing models and calculate gross and contribution margin by SKU, incorporating ingredients, packaging, direct labour, fulfilment, fees, courier and wastage.
• Highlight products and channels with weak, declining or misleading margins, and assess the impact of price changes, promotions and new-product launches.
• Identify which channels and products are genuinely creating profitable growth and which are consuming cash or attention without sufficient return.
Stock, Factory & Labour
• Reconcile stock records between finance and operational systems, monitoring the value of ingredients, packaging, WIP and finished goods.
• Review stock adjustments, write-offs, wastage and discrepancies; identify slow-moving, obsolete or excessive stock and improve visibility of cash tied up in inventory.
• Support regular stock counts and investigate material variances, working with demand planning and operations to improve purchasing and production decisions.
• Track direct and indirect labour expenditure and report labour cost as a % of revenue and production output.
• Analyse actual production costs against standards and identify overtime, agency spend, downtime, waste, rework and avoidable labour leakage.
Reconciliations, VAT & Financial Control
• Ensure sales and payouts are fully reconciled across Shopify, TikTok Shop, Amazon and payment providers, investigating missing, delayed or incorrect settlements.
• Reconcile bank accounts and key control accounts; review courier and supplier invoices for billing errors, overcharges or breaches of agreed terms.
• Improve purchase-order, invoice-approval and payment controls, creating clear processes that reduce reliance on memory and manual intervention.
• Maintain visibility of VAT liabilities, repayments and filing requirements, supporting accurate and timely submissions and reconciling VAT positions.
• Identify financial leakage and ensure corrective actions are followed through to resolution.
Your Role as the Founder’s Commercial Partner
As Commercial Finance Manager, you will be the owner of the weekly financial truth, playing a crucial role in helping the Founder make confident decisions. This means:
• Delivering one clear weekly report rather than the Founder having to request information from multiple people.
• Focusing on what has changed, why it matters and what action is required.
• Holding the numbers to account – investigating why a figure moved, explaining its impact and recommending next steps.
• Identifying and solving financial bottlenecks and leaks proactively, before they become urgent.
• Acting as a strategic partner to the Founder, translating commercial ambition into structured, financially grounded plans.
Who is the Right Fit for This Role?
• Commercially Curious – You naturally want to understand what sits behind the numbers, not just report that they changed.
• Accurate & Detail-Focused – You are rigorous with reconciliations and financial control, yet comfortable zooming out to higher-level commercial analysis.
• Proactive & Independent – You are calm and dependable in a fast-moving environment and follow issues through until they are resolved.
• A Clear Communicator – You can explain financial information simply to non-finance colleagues and are confident challenging assumptions and asking difficult questions.
• Commercial Rather Than Purely Technical – You care about how products are physically made and are genuinely interested in operations and production.
• A Builder, Not a Waiter – You are willing to improve imperfect processes rather than waiting for a perfect system, and comfortable working directly with a Founder.
