Financial Controller - Remote - Independent Contractor - PH Based

Living in a Bubble sells premium campervan and outdoor accessories, direct to consumers and through marketplaces in Australia, the United States, Canada and Germany. We operate across two legal entities and five tax jurisdictions. We are a team of fourteen — two in Australia, twelve working remotely across the Philippines and elsewhere. We are small, run properly, and our bookkeeping is handled by an external firm. What we do not have is a finance professional who owns the output.

Right now the CEO does all of the finance: the monthly close, five indirect tax regimes, the pricing analysis, the landed cost, the advisor coordination. It works, and it does not scale, and there is no one else who could pick it up.

You would take that. Not the bookkeeping — an external firm does the bookkeeping. The layer above it: whether the numbers are right, whether the filings are on time, and whether someone other than the founder can read the business.

This is a build-and-run role in a business that has never had one. You will inherit real processes that mostly work and real gaps that do not. You bring the analysis and the judgement; the CEO keeps the final call on pricing, payments, tax and structure.

What you would own

1. The monthly close. You own the calendar, the quality bar and the query queue while the external bookkeeper does the execution. Settlement reconciliation for two marketplace accounts, the consolidated group P&L across both entities, the stock take, and the year-end pack for our Australian tax advisors. Getting the close to business day five is a first-half objective, not a week-one expectation.
2. Indirect tax in five jurisdictions. US sales tax, German VAT, UK VAT under Making Tax Digital, Canadian GST, Australian BAS. Four external firms do the filings. You are not expected to have technical depth in all five regimes — nobody does. You run the control that sits over them: a filing calendar nobody misses, data prepared to each firm's specification, a reconciliation of what was filed against what the books say, and a written query log when the two disagree.
3. Management reporting. Daily channel P&L across both marketplace accounts, a weekly sales report, a monthly P&L analysis with an executive summary someone acts on, the KPI scorecard, product and range performance. Today these exist in pieces; you would make them one thing.
4. Pricing and unit economics. The standing price review, margin verification after every price change, markdowns on aged stock, contribution by channel, third-party logistics cost against what we are charged. You bring the analysis; the CEO decides.
5. Landed cost. A monthly reference refresh and verification of cost uploads. Cost rolls forward in our systems, so an error corrupts forward margin silently and nothing tells you. There is a backlog of known cost conflicts to work through in your first half-year.
6. Controls and documentation. A written SOP for every recurring process, an access map so the function survives any one person being unavailable, and an audit-readiness file that does not exist today. These are gating deliverables, not nice-to-haves.

Not in this role

Payment release stays with the CEO. Accounts payable processing and payroll preparation stay where they are today, with our EA and the external bookkeeper, so your time goes to the close, the tax control, the reporting and the analysis. As the function grows, a finance assistant will take on that transactional layer and report to you.

Your first 90 days

1. Month 1. Access to everything, mapped and documented. Take over the daily and weekly reporting. Sit through one full close and write down what actually happens, as opposed to what is supposed to. Inherit the filing calendar and confirm two quarters of deadlines.
2. Month 2. Own the close on its current timetable, fully documented, and give us a dated plan to bring it forward to business day five. Produce the consolidated group P&L without the CEO involved. Run the landed-cost refresh end to end. Write your first three SOPs.
3. Month 3. The monthly pack lands without being asked for. The filing calendar runs itself. The CEO reads exceptions rather than reports.
4. Month 6. Close at business day five with variance inside tolerance. The SOP set and access map complete. First formal review.

Beyond that, year one is about the things nobody has had time to settle: the FX convention, the product identifier gaps, a costed recommendation on US state tax registration, and discount bands with margin floors so that marketing can approve inside a band.

Where this role goes

We would rather you understood the arc than discovered it.

Months 0 to 6 — you take the machine off the founder. The recurring reporting, the close, the filing calendar. Success here is measured in the CEO's calendar, not in anything you build. It is the least interesting phase and the one that earns everything after it.

Months 6 to 18 — Controller proper. The judgement work starts: the FX convention, SKU mapping across our largest channel, landed-cost integrity, a costed position on US state registration, discount bands the business runs inside. This is where you stop producing reports and start producing answers.

Months 18 onward — the role splits in two directions and you will have a say in which. One path is Head of Finance, with a finance assistant beneath you taking the transactional layer, then forecasting, inventory-buy modelling and planning. The other is transaction readiness: audit-ready accounts, quality of earnings, normalised reporting, a data room. Both are real, and the review at month six is where we start that conversation rather than the first place we surprise you with it.

What will not change: payment release and the final call on pricing, structure and tax sit with the CEO.

How you will be checked

You are the finance function, so the quality control is external by design and we would rather be explicit about it. Our external bookkeeping firm checks the work at the close. Our Australian tax advisors check it annually at year-end. You are not being asked to be your own second pair of eyes, and nobody here expects a clean run with no queries.

Requirements

1. CPA or CA qualified, with a Big 4 audit or advisory background at manager or assistant manager level, or equivalent depth in industry.
2. Multi-entity, multi-currency reporting — consolidating entities with different start dates, and a defensible view on how FX should be handled.
3. Close discipline — calendar, working papers, reconciliations, variance tolerance, and the temperament to hold an external bookkeeper to a standard.
4. Indirect tax across more than one jurisdiction. Not all five of ours, but you have coordinated external firms and you know what a control over an outsourced filing looks like.
5. Comfortable building before you delegate. In year one you build it and you also run it.
6. Writing. A good half of this job is an executive summary that someone reads and acts on.
7. Based in the Philippines, able to work as an independent contractor, with a daily availability window overlapping the Australian morning.

Useful, not required

E-commerce or consumer goods; Power BI or similar modelling; inventory-heavy businesses and landed-cost work; Australian tax exposure.

We expect to teach you

Our marketplace analytics stack, settlement journals and fee mechanics, our SKU conventions, and an inventory system that is mid-implementation. Nobody arrives knowing these, and not knowing them is not a reason to hold back an application.

Benefits

• Generous remuneration depending on experience, invoiced monthly in US dollars.
• An annual bonus arrangement in line with the rest of our remote team.
• Fully remote, with an agreed daily availability window rather than fixed office hours.
• A formal review at six months covering performance, conversion to a permanent arrangement, and whether the scope of the role widens.
• A defined path beyond year one — Head of Finance with a team beneath you, or transaction readiness. You would have a say in which.
• Direct reporting line to the CEO. No layer between your analysis and the decision.
• External assurance by design: our bookkeeping firm checks the work at each close and our Australian tax advisors check it annually, so you are not the only pair of eyes on your own output.