Financial Planner Discounts at The Coca-Cola Company

Key Purpose  

• To execute discount related processes and procedures for Commercial Head Office to enable accurate discount allocation, spend and reporting. Partner with commercial operational teams to provide strong, integrated analytical insights and support that enable the delivery of the discount financial performance of CCBSA.

Key Duties & Responsibilities    
Key Outputs and Accountabilities 

Cost Management and Reporting

• Reconcile discount data between systems and provide commentary. 
• Prepare commentary for discount lines in the Income Statement when analysing actuals versus budget and actuals versus prior year.
• Process reallocation journals, including Customer Development Finance (CDF) accruals to ensure that they’ve been correctly accounted for in the correct period, and have been correctly classified.
• Consolidate total CCBSA manual discounts and conduct an analysis for Commercial as input into the Commercial Business Review.
• Consolidate the regional manual discount submission and ensure this balances to the General Ledger. 
• Track and monitor committed line items and communicate to Purchase Order creators to ensure discounts are accounted for in the correct period.
• Track and monitor discount accrual balances brought forward from prior year to ensure they are utilised within the required period. 
• Track and monitor discount accrual balances raised in current period to ensure that there are no debit balance accruals.
• Prepare reconciliation for Balance Sheet general discount ledger accounts affecting Head Office Commercial.
• Review all discount reconciliations prepared by Genpact and highlight outstanding accruals requiring investigation. 
• Review cost centres with cost centres owners in order to highlight risk of overspend / discount opportunities. 
• Conduct adhoc financial analyses as required by the business relating to discounts for specific customers and / or incentives, to identify opportunities for operational improvements.
• Conduct discount analyses as input into calculating the Return on Investment to highlight effective and ineffective promotions to drive top line margin improvements.
• Provide suggestions to improve discount reporting for the business.

Governance

• Track and monitor Risk and Control Matrix (RACM) adherence and compliance relating to discounts within commercial head office teams and conduct quarterly self-assessments.
• Track and monitor all discount related accounts to ensure correct item classification and compliance to the CCBSA reporting standardisation guidelines, as defined by The Coca-Cola Company. 
• Prepare and provide supporting evidence for items requested by internal and external auditors.
• Build discounts capability with Head Office Commercial teams through ongoing coaching and support.

Budgeting 

• Partner with Pricing to ensure the discount full-year forecast for the financial period caters for all promotions for all Channels.

Skills, Experience & Education    
Qualifications and Experience

• BCom in financial management or equivalent.
• Chartered Accountant of South Africa (CA(SA)) / Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) would be advantageous.
• 3-5 years of financial management experience.
• Intermediate level of MS Office.

Competencies 

Customer Focus 

• Is dedicated to meeting the expectations and requirements of internal and external customers; gets first-hand customer information and uses it for improvements in products and services; acts with customers in mind; establishes and maintains effective relationships with customers and gains their trust and respect.

Timely Decision 

• Making Makes decisions in a timely manner, sometimes with incomplete information and under tight deadlines and pressure; able to make a quick decision.

Approachability

• Is easy to approach and talk to; spends the extra effort to put others at ease; can be warm, pleasant, and gracious; is sensitive to and patient with the interpersonal anxieties of others; builds rapport well; is a good listener; is an early knower, getting informal and incomplete information in time to do something about it.

Action Oriented

• Enjoys working hard; is action oriented and full of energy for the things he/she sees as challenging; not fearful of acting with a minimum of planning; seizes more opportunities than others.

Interpersonal Savvy 

• Relates well to all kinds of people, up, down, and sideways, inside and outside the organization; builds appropriate rapport; builds constructive and effective relationships; uses diplomacy and tact; can diffuse even high-tension situations comfortably.

Organizing

• Can marshal resources (people, funding, material, support) to get things done; can orchestrate multiple activities at once to accomplish a goal; uses resources effectively and efficiently arranges information and files in a useful manner.

Knowledge
•    International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) reporting standards used to regulate reporting standards.