Our finance managers make sure that our frontline staff have the resources they need to be able to deliver the treatment and care our patients need.

Managing the finances of an NHS organisation, whether it is a large hospital trust, ambulance service trust or clinical commissioning group, is like running the finances of a large company. As a finance manager, you’ll be responsible for ensuring that the funds for these organisations are allocated and spent appropriately for the good our staff and patients. 

Working life

In financial management, your role will incorporate managing budgets and deciding on resource allocation.

It will include:

  • payroll and pensions - ensuring staff get paid
  • accounts - paying for goods and services, collecting income
  • financial systems - the Information Technology (IT) systems that track all financial activity
  • management information - gathering and interpreting the financial data required to make day-to-day and strategic management decisions
  • reporting - preparing annual financial reports and co-ordinating with the Inland Revenue, VAT collection and other authorities
  • financial audit - checking expenditure and income.

Management accountant

In this example, you would work closely with the head of finance and:

  • establish systems and processes to enable the timely and accurate delivery of monthly management accounts and budget information
  • be involved in the annual budget setting process
  • provide ongoing support and direction for the budget holders
  • investigate and report on variances
  • be involved in ad hoc projects and reports (eg contributing to the five-year business planning processes.

Financial planning manager

  • Here, you will be:

  • working for an NHS trust or clinical commissioning group
  • providing a financial planning service to commissioning acute services
  • providing the financial data to support local delivery plans and the Service Level Agreement process.​​​​​​​

Assistant director of finance

  • In this type of role, you will be

    Your role will incorporate managing budgets and deciding on resource allocation

  • responsible for financial planning and control for a specific organisation (eg working in an NHS trust, supporting the needs of over 3 million people and employing 7,100 staff on two main and two smaller sites
  • integral in managing a budget to improve health care provision (eg a £270 million scheme to modernise the trust,  including moving the majority of acute facilities onto a single site hospital)
  • a key member of the Finance Senior Management team, with main areas of responsibility to lead the maintenance and development of finance systems and formulate business cases to develop and modernise the trusts services.
  • providing a comprehensive financial service in relation to the Trusts Corporate Governance Agenda.

Head of finance

Working within an NHS trust or clinical commissioning group and in this example, you’ll have responsibility for the financial leadership of the information communication and technology programme across a number of NHS organisations to ensure that all statutory financial requirements are met.

There are opportunities to work in finance in non-managerial roles.

Find out more about non-management opportunities in finance

Who would I work with?

You could be working with, human resources managers, clinical managers and staff woking in strategic management.