Senior Billing Assistant

at  Capsticks Solicitors LLP

Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Competitive Salary & Benefits
Permanent - Full-time
Job reference: LR1080994LeeSBA
Location Leeds

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

Candidates should ideally have:

• Previous experience of working in a legal accounting environment or Billing environment.
• Previous experience of supervising a team
• Strong administration and organisational skills;
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Strong Excel skills
• Self-disciplined and the ability to prioritise workloads independently to tight deadlines;
• Excellent communication skills;
• Ability to work independently and as part of a wider team
• The ability to work calmly under pressure;

Candidates will also be expected to demonstrate that they are:

• Professional and self-motivated;
• Proactive in their approach;
• Willing to learn and develop; and
• Able to work in a busy, professional environment;
• A team player.

THE ROLE AND RESPONSBILITES

This is a varied role covering several aspects of the day to day running of a busy law firm Billing team including:

• Direct supervision of a team of 4 Billing Assistants, providing an environment to inspire and deliver continuous improvement, with a focus to consistently achieve against KPIs, and maintain existing deadlines.
• Supporting the Head of Billing and FA and the Billing Manager in the management of WIP lock up, generating reports, attending HOD/SMT meetings, liaising with the wider business whilst supervising the billing team on their sector WIP to reduce lock up days across the business.
• Coordinate and oversee the distribution and return of the billing ensuring maximum recovery rates, timely and effective billing processes.
• Ensure the shared mailbox is effectively managed, requests and queries are categorised and responded to in a timely, manner, manage the prioritisation of resource during busy periods.
• Monitor the team performance against target throughout the month, ensure that WIP conversion rates are maintained, and any unbilled WIP/non returns followed up, with an aim to improve month on month conversion and reduce blockages in the OTC cycle.
• Liaise directly with partners and fee earners to ensure the correct charge rates are allocated to the clients / matters, and billing processes are aligned with any SLAs;
• Managing discounts and rebates, liaising with the fee earners to agree the amounts and then the cashiers to ensure it is paid electronically and promptly;
• Liaise directly with the Credit Control team to ensure any OTC blockages within billing processes are identified and corrected in line with client requirements.
• Manage end to end any escalated or confidential queries, provide any MI and/or audit response as required, ensure any proposals for correction are robust and considered, supervise the correction or remedial action, sign off upon completion and provide communication to partners and clients in support of findings in a timely effective manner.
• Maintaining, billing and monitoring annual fixed fee contracts, providing timely and effective tracking reports to the client lead, advising on management of time and profitability.
• Ensuring time write-offs are correctly authorised as per company policy and promptly effected;
• Liaising with cashiers and credit control in relation to payment queries;
• Producing relevant MI for fee earners, partners and clients showing levels of billings appropriately analysed as required;
• Supervise the generation of credit notes, ensure the central register is maintained in a timely manner, that reversal procedures are robust and residual WIP is identified and dealt with appropriately
• Analysing the generation of credit notes each period from the central register, with an aim to reduce volume/error rates, ensure lessons learnt are communicated, and where possible improvements development, ultimately to reduce waste within the department.
• Ensuring VAT rules are correctly interpreted and applied;
• Liaising with the Finance Administration team to ensure matters correctly set-up and billed on time;
• Escalating any issues that may hinder the billing process.

OTHER DUTIES:

Any other duties as reasonably requested by the Head of Billing & Finance Administration, or the Director of Finance.
As part of our approach in developing staff there will be opportunities to experience other areas of work within the Finance function, shadowing staff in related areas and covering for holiday and other absences.
The introduction of the new PMS has allowed for greater automation of the overall billing process and all billers will be expected to input into the process of designing efficient solutions.
At month end or year end there may be a need to work beyond the standard hours and billers will be expected to arrange matters to accommodate this need.