Commercial Management Accountant (023-1218)

Looking for Philippines-based candidates

Job Role: Management Accountant (Commercial)

Compensation range: $2,800 AUD - $3,500 AUD / Monthly

Engagement type: Independent Contractor Agreement

Work Schedule: This role is expected to align with the AU business hours (approx. 9 AM - 5 PM, Monday to Friday) for collaboration, but as a contractor, you’ll have flexibility in how you manage your time.

Who We Are: At Hunt St, we help Australian companies hire top remote talent in the Philippines. For this role, you will be engaged directly by the client as an independent contractor. We are not an outsourcing agency. All of our roles are 100% remote so you'll be able to work from home.

Who The Client Is: We operate within the financial advisory and business consulting space, helping small and medium-sized businesses improve financial performance and achieve sustainable growth. We provide practical financial guidance across areas such as cash management, financial reporting, profitability, revenue modelling, strategic planning, and business systems.

We operate within the financial advisory and business consulting space, helping small and medium-sized businesses improve financial performance and achieve sustainable growth. We provide practical financial guidance across areas such as cash management, financial reporting, profitability, revenue modelling, strategic planning, and business systems.

Role Overview: We are seeking an experienced Commercial Management Accountant to join our growing CFO and advisory team supporting Australian SMEs.

The Commercial Management Accountant must have a practical working knowledge of the Australian tax environment.

This is not a tax-agent or tax-compliance position, and the successful candidate will not be expected to provide tax advice outside their professional authority.

However, commercial and CFO recommendations frequently have potential tax consequences. The successful candidate therefore needs sufficient Australian tax knowledge to recognise these implications, incorporate them appropriately into their commercial thinking, and identify when specialist tax advice should be obtained before a strategy is recommended or implemented.

The objective is not to replace the client's tax accountant. It is to ensure that our commercial recommendations are developed with appropriate awareness of the Australian tax environment.

The successful candidate will work across management reporting, budgeting and forecasting, cash flow, profitability, financial modelling, dashboard reporting and commercial analysis.

Most importantly, they will be expected to move beyond preparing numbers to understanding:

• What do the numbers mean?
• Why is this happening?
• What information are we missing?
• What should we investigate?
• What could the business do differently?
• What decision does the business owner need to make next?

Our CFO service sits in the space between traditional bookkeeping/accounting and an internal senior finance function.

We help growing SMEs build the financial capability they need as they become larger and more sophisticated — until they ultimately have the capability and scale to build their own internal finance leadership.

Our philosophy is High Tech + High Touch.

We use technology, AI, automation, systems and repeatable methodologies to remove unnecessary manual work while preserving the human elements that create the greatest value: commercial thinking, challenge, education, relationships and decision support.

We believe strongly in education and knowledge transfer.

Our goal is not to make clients permanently dependent upon us. We help business owners and their finance teams understand their numbers and progressively develop stronger internal financial capability.

The Commercial Management Accountant will therefore be both a commercial problem solver and an educator.

Key Responsibilities: 

The Commercial Management Accountant will work as part of a collaborative CFO and finance delivery team.

Senior Leadership

Jeremy Harris – CFO / Senior Fractional CFO

Jeremy provides senior commercial and strategic CFO capability. As the team develops, his involvement will increasingly focus on the highest-value strategic judgement, complex commercial issues, review and specialist CFO work.

CFO Team

Rache – CFO Lead / Senior CFO Team Member

Rache has strong management reporting experience, excellent interpersonal capability and significant knowledge of our clients, systems and service delivery. The new Commercial Management Accountant will work closely and collaboratively with Rache.

The intention is to build complementary capability rather than individual silos.

Bookkeeping & Finance Operations Team

The Commercial Management Accountant will also work closely with our bookkeeping team, including the bookkeeping team leader and accounting/bookkeeping team members.

The CFO team is expected to bridge the gap between bookkeeping and commercial finance.

This includes identifying where underlying accounting information or processes need improvement, designing the required correction or process, and determining whether work should be:

• undertaken by the Commercial Management Accountant;
• delegated to another CFO team member;
• delegated to our bookkeeping team;
• undertaken by the client's own bookkeeper or finance team;
• referred to the client's accountant; or
• automated/systemised.

Future Team

As the CFO service grows, we expect to add Management Accountants and Junior Management Accountants beneath this capability layer.

The successful candidate will therefore have the opportunity to mentor, train and ultimately lead developing finance professionals.

Management Accounting & Financial Analysis

• Prepare and review monthly management accounts.
• Analyse Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and cash flow information.
• Prepare meaningful variance analysis.
• Identify trends, anomalies and areas requiring investigation.
• Identify accounting treatments or timing issues that distort management reporting.
• Assess whether financial data is sufficiently reliable for management decision-making.
• Identify financial-data gaps.
• Review accounting files and recommend cleanup or process improvements.
• Design appropriate accounting or reporting corrections where required.
• Work collaboratively with bookkeeping teams to improve the quality and usefulness of financial information.

The successful candidate needs enough accounting depth to understand how the underlying accounting affects the commercial story.

For example, they should recognise where timing differences such as an additional fortnightly payroll in a month materially distort month-to-month comparisons and understand how appropriate month-end accounting processes can create more meaningful management reporting.

Budgeting, Forecasting & Cash Flow

• Build driver-based annual budgets.
• Prepare rolling forecasts and reforecasts.
• Develop cash-flow forecasts.
• Analyse the causes of cash-flow pressure.
• Identify opportunities to improve working capital.
• Develop financial scenarios.
• Help management understand the assumptions and business drivers behind budgets and forecasts.

Commercial Analysis & Modelling

• Undertake commercial modelling projects.
• Analyse job, project, product, customer and service-line profitability.
• Determine what operational and financial data is required for meaningful analysis.
• Analyse margins, labour costs, productivity, pricing, capacity and working capital.
• Develop models supporting commercial decisions.
• Translate financial analysis into practical recommendations.

Reporting & Dashboards

• Develop and maintain meaningful management reports and dashboards.
• Use platforms such as Fathom, Syft Analytics or Translucent.io.
• Determine the KPIs that matter for each business rather than simply reporting available data.
• Prepare written CFO commentary.
• Identify issues, opportunities and recommended actions from financial results.

Commercial Problem Solving

When an issue is identified, the Commercial Management Accountant should progressively be capable of independently:

Identify → Frame → Scope → Plan → Estimate → Delegate → Investigate → Analyse → Recommend → Review → Educate → Document

This includes:

• forming hypotheses about potential causes;
• determining required information;
• designing the investigation;
• estimating required time;
• considering whether the work is within client scope;
• determining who should perform each component;
• making appropriate data requests;
• completing analysis;
• developing recommendations;
• obtaining appropriate peer/senior review;
• communicating findings; and
• capturing useful processes and learning.

We value initiative with commercial discipline.

We want someone who says:

"I've identified an issue. I think these may be the causes. Here's how I propose investigating it, what information we need, what can be delegated, approximately how long it should take and when I can come back with findings. Can we confirm this is within scope before I proceed?"

Delegation & Capability Development

The successful candidate must be comfortable doing detailed work but should not believe that seniority means personally doing everything.

They should know when to:

Do → Delegate → Educate → Automate → Escalate.

They will:

• delegate appropriate preparation and investigation work;
• provide clear instructions;
• review delegated work;
• develop junior team capability;
• help bookkeeping staff understand the commercial purpose of their work;
• design processes that can be operated by clients' own finance teams; and
• actively transfer knowledge rather than retain it.

Client Meetings & Education

Initially, the Commercial Management Accountant will participate in client meetings alongside senior CFO team members.

They will progressively:

• prepare meeting agendas;
• identify questions requiring management discussion;
• present their analysis;
• explain financial concepts without unnecessary accounting jargon;
• recommend commercial actions;
• facilitate financial discussions; and
• ultimately independently lead management and CFO meetings

Education is a core part of our service.

We believe the best CFO relationship leaves a business owner and their finance team more financially capable than when we started working with them.

AI, Technology & Automation

The successful candidate should be enthusiastic about using technology to improve professional finance work.

They will:

• use AI appropriately for research, analysis, documentation and workflow improvement;
• contribute to AI-assisted CFO methodologies;
• identify automation opportunities;
• develop reusable prompts, templates and workflows;
• help document processes for future AI use;
• contribute to training and learning materials; and 
• participate in productising repeatable CFO processes.

Strong automation experience is highly regarded, particularly within the Microsoft ecosystem, including Power Automate and related Microsoft 365 tools.

Australian Tax & Commercial Decision-Making

• Maintain a sound practical working knowledge of Australian taxation as it commonly affects SMEs and their commercial decisions.
• Recognise when a proposed commercial strategy may have Australian tax consequences.
• Consider tax implications when developing budgets, forecasts, cash-flow models and commercial recommendations.
• Understand the cash-flow implications of Australian tax obligations.
• Identify when a matter requires specialist tax advice or input from the client's accountant/tax adviser.
• Clearly distinguish between commercial/CFO recommendations and regulated tax advice.
• Work collaboratively with clients' accountants and tax advisers where their expertise is required.
• Ensure recommendations are not developed in isolation from material tax considerations.

The successful candidate is not expected to be an Australian Registered Tax Agent.

We are specifically looking for sufficient knowledge and experience to recognise relevant tax issues, ask appropriate questions and know when specialist advice is required.

Required Skills and Qualifications:

Candidates should demonstrate:

• 5+ years of relevant accounting, management accounting or commercial finance experience; capability is more important than tenure.
• Practical experience with Australian accounting, taxation and SME environments.
• Strong management accounting capability, including management accounts, budgeting, forecasting and cash-flow analysis.
• Strong understanding of P&L, Balance Sheet, cash flow, profitability, margins and working capital.
• Ability to investigate financial information, identify accounting/data-quality issues and improve management reporting.
• Strong Excel and financial modelling skills.
• Strong accounting software experience, preferably Xero.
• Practical understanding of GST, BAS, PAYG withholding, payroll and superannuation.
• Sound commercial judgement and ability to recognise tax implications and escalate matters appropriately to external accountants or Registered Tax Agents.
• Ability to work collaboratively with external accountants and advisers.
• Excellent written and spoken English, with the ability to explain financial concepts to non-accountants.
• Strong problem-solving, initiative, ownership and organisational skills.
• Ability to work independently, meet deadlines, collaborate remotely and delegate effectively.

Nice-to-Have Skills & Experience

Highly regarded:

• 3+ years supporting Australian SMEs, particularly in outsourced accounting, advisory, management accounting or fractional CFO environments.
• CPA, CA or equivalent qualification.
• Experience with Fathom, Syft Analytics, Translucent.io or QuickBooks Online.
• Advanced Xero experience.
• Experience with 13-week cash-flow forecasting, profitability, pricing, margin or capacity modelling.
• Dashboard, KPI and CFO/Board reporting experience.
• Client management-meeting experience.
• Training or mentoring junior finance staff.
• Experience developing financial learning or educational materials.
• Practical AI experience using ChatGPT, Claude or similar tools.
• Microsoft automation experience.
• Process documentation, standardisation or productisation experience.
• Experience preparing/reviewing BAS/IAS, Australian year-end accounting or business tax compliance.

Five-Year Career Opportunity

This is not intended to be a static Management Accountant role.

We are looking for someone who wants to build an exceptional career in commercial finance and fractional CFO advisory.

A high-performing candidate could progress approximately as follows:

Years 1–2 — Commercial Management Accountant

Develop deep understanding of our CFO methodology, independently undertake increasingly sophisticated commercial analysis, contribute to client meetings and begin leading defined CFO projects.

Years 2–3 — Senior Commercial Management Accountant

Take greater ownership of client outcomes, independently lead selected management meetings, mentor developing Management Accountants and contribute significantly to the development of our CFO methodologies and learning systems.

Years 3–4 — Senior CFO / Fractional CFO Capability

Independently lead CFO engagements, facilitate strategic financial discussions, develop other team members, undertake complex modelling and commercial projects and contribute to peer review and quality assurance.

Years 4–5+ — CFO Team Leadership / Specialist Pathway

Depending on strengths and aspirations, opportunities could develop toward:

• Fractional CFO;
• Senior Fractional CFO;
• CFO Team Leader;
• Commercial Finance Lead;
• Learning & Capability Lead;
• AI & Finance Innovation Lead;
• specialist commercial modelling/advisory; or
• future leadership roles created as the CFO service expands.

The exact pathway does not need to be predetermined.

We want ambitious people to have the opportunity to grow their capability, influence, remuneration and leadership responsibility as the business grows.

Our intention is to create structured learning pathways so that career progression is based on demonstrated capability rather than simply tenure.

Work Arrangement & Expectations:

This is a remote role that will be set up as an independent contractor engagement.

To ensure alignment and transparency, successful candidates will be expected to:

• Disclose any existing ongoing roles or client work
• Reflect this engagement on their LinkedIn profile (clearly marked as “Independent Contractor”)