Junior Accountant

About the role
This is a permanent, full-time position for a junior accountant at Westhafen Consulting. The role keeps the firm's books in order and supports the written work that goes out to clients under an author's signature.
The position is hybrid, based at our Berlin office in Germany. You will work alongside the people who draft and sign our memoranda, so the figures you check and the files you keep are part of the same record.

The work
Day to day, the junior accountant handles the firm's bookkeeping and the accounting side of client work. The tasks below describe the shape of the role.

1. Keep the books: record income and expenses, reconcile bank accounts, and prepare monthly figures for review.
2. Check the figures in a draft memorandum before it goes to an author for sign-off, and note any query in writing.
3. Keep the file in order: correspondence, invoices, signed documents and memoranda filed so that any item can be found again.
4. Handle correspondence with the office of a client on invoicing and accounting questions, in clear English.
5. Prepare the papers for internal reviews of the firm's own accounts and assist with anything the annual audit requires.

A typical week
Monday brings the bank statements and the week's invoices, which are entered and matched before anything else. Midweek, a draft memorandum may arrive for a figures check, and you return it with comments to the named author. Towards the end of the week the monthly accounts are closed, queries are answered by email, and the papers are filed in the order the author expects. Anything unresolved goes into the following week as a written note.

What you bring

• Careful writing in English, since most of the file and the correspondence are in English.
• Attention to detail in figures, and the habit of checking a total twice before it leaves your desk.
• Reliable timekeeping: documents have dates attached to them and are expected on those dates.
• Discretion. Material shared by a client stays between you and the author.
• An interest in accounting as a craft, and the willingness to ask a question when something is unclear.

Useful but not required

• German at a working level, for correspondence with authorities and local suppliers.
• Studies in accounting, economics, law or a related field.
• Comfort with accounting software and document tools.

What the firm provides
You will work hybrid, with time at our Berlin office and time at home, and the split is arranged with your colleagues. A named author takes you through the work, reads what you produce and says plainly where it needs to be tighter. We set aside blocks of time for focused work, because figures and files require it. The firm keeps its own records carefully, and you will see how a written practice runs from the inside.

The firm
Westhafen Consulting is a private advisory practice with offices in Berlin and New York. We advise chairs, chief executives and board committees on decisions that are hard to reverse, and our counsel is delivered as signed written memoranda. The document is the record, and the accounting file behind it deserves the same care.