State Street - Assistant Vice President - Payroll Accounting Lead

Background :

Driven by the Beacon initiatives, functionalization of the corporate functions and re-alignment of the Finance Operating Model, State Street has established the Global Accounting Operations (GAO) organization in 2017. GAO is a process-focused organization responsible for the majority of the record-to-report (R2R) activities performed at State Street. Organizationally, it combines all groups performing these activities Globally and also includes Accounting Centers residing in State Street Shared Service locations in Poland, India and China. GAO organization is established on principles of Global Process Ownership and process excellence, owning all aspects of business-as-usual activities within R2R areas and driving process improvements and automation Globally.

To achieve this objective, GAO has been structured into several distinct global units each is responsible for all aspects of selected major groups of R2R activities, such as Close & Consolidations, Revenue/Expense Accounting, Payroll Accounting, Intercompany Transactions, Specialized/Producting Accounting, Cash/Deposit governance and others. Each global unit will be responsible for all aspects of business-as-usual activities within their group of processes, as well as process re-engineering and automation activities - this includes leading process assessments; driving process design and process re-engineering work; co-owning technology initiatives bringing automation to GAO organization, working in close collaboration with the teams in Finance Technology, Finance Re-Engineering, Data Management, and other partnership organizations.

Basic Purpose of Job :

The Payroll Accounting Lead will be responsible for all aspects of US GAAP, payroll accrual accounting and day-to-day management of a team of experienced Accounting professionals that provide support to the Global HR group as well as various Controller groups.

This individual will provide subject matter expertise in the area of accounting related to Payroll, Payroll Taxes and Human Resource benefit accounting which include the below

Responsibilities & Tasks Include :

Business As Usual (BAU) Activities :

- Collaborate closely with the onshore team to understand expectations and deliverable timelines and ensure that deliverables of the team are load balanced as compared to team staffing.

- Develop the team to adopt - owner's mind set-, work independently, and effectively manage timelines

- Manage resources to assist with ad-hoc projects and new transactions to support the GAO Accounting controller group

- Performing managerial reasonableness reviews and discussing reporting & analytics deliverables prepared by the team to ensure results make sense, that messaging is on point for the audience and ensuring the core objective of the deliverable is met

- Provide support to key stakeholders of the team to present analytical results, findings

- First point of escalation within the local reporting line for dealing with issues (people/process/technology) and ensuring that compliance requirements are adhered to (e.g. company policies surrounding standard of conduct, information security, employment regulations)

- May be required to participate in or conduct a wide range of accounting and financial analyses on critical and complex issues which may include variance analysis and accounting transactions.

- May serve as a subject matter expert on a particular accounting transactions.

- Coaches the team and works with onshore leadership to establish the team member goals and gather feedback for performance appraisals.

- Participate in or manage function specific projects as needed

- Ensure completion of deliverables within the committed timeframe including assistance with development of deliverable plans, attending deliverable specific or recurring meetings between the team and the onshore team. Team deliverables revolve around;

Daily:

- Monitor daily payroll tax reports and ensure accuracy and properly reconciled against payroll reports and fed/state reconciliations

- Prepare additional and corrective payroll journal entries and post to Peoplesoft Payroll System (ie. Used for daily terminations, corerctions to biweekly payrolls, etc)

- Prepare, wire and record entries for daily benefit payments made for various employee benefits (ie. Health & dental, 401K, etc)

- Provide real time data for our global mobility group so they can calculate and prepare benefit amounts for impacted individuals

- Contact federal, state and local taxing authorities relating to payroll filing and payment delinquencies, questions, etc.

- Prepare & file Form W2 corrections for North American employees

- Reconcile DDA accounts on a daily basis for employee payroll check, ACH direct deposit kickers, non cashed payroll tax agency checks

- Provide real time support & research for our Tier 3 employee support ticket escalation

- Employee benefit vendor research for missing benefit deductions, over deductions, corrections to vendor reports, etc.

Weekly:

- Prepare off-book manual journal entries

- Upload payroll controller files to Oracle for distribution and money movement

- Review & authorize Canadian manual payroll checks

- Update US and Canadian tax workbooks with 3rd party providers to ensure all corrected payrolls and associated taxes have been provided to the respective taxing agencies

- Validate and approve all weekly payroll tax filings for our 3rd party tax outsource partner (several states are filed weekly depending upon dollar thresholds)

Monthly:

- Coordinate month-end close including prepare manual journal entries and export accounting system reports

- Prepare account reconciliations and certification for approximately 30 tax, DDA, payroll and employee benefit accounts

- Validate and approve all weekly payroll tax filings for our 3rd party tax outsource partner (several states are filed monthly depending upon dollar thresholds)

- Provide intercompany entries for US employees tax withholdings on international assignments

- Review DDA accounts for uncashed manual payroll checks and contact employees directly for reissuance or follow up

Quarterly:

- Review all quarterly tax form filings before filing (15 EIN's in total)

- Perform SOX control testing

- Review stock award vests and their impact on employee Form w2's along with prepare gross ups for stock awards

Semi Annually:

- Prepare bi annual abandoned property reporting

Annual:

- Review all annual payroll tax filings

- Prepare Form w2's for employees in the US and Canada

- Provide organization of reports to US Census bureau containing various payroll information on wages, employee count, location, etc.

Ad-Hoc:

- Prepare and update process narratives/procedures and flow charts

- Response to internal and external requests including variance analysis and inquires

- Participate in Ad Hoc projects and new transactions

- Prepare employee wage gross up for Fidelity retirement plans (ESRP) for MC level retirements

- Move all employees & payroll history / records upon creating a new EIN (has happened 3 times in 2017 thus far)

- Perform user access reviews & certifications

Process Re-Engineering, Standardization, and Automation:

- Lead the process Re-Engineering, Standardization, Automation

- Responsibility for ongoing process improvements

- Responsibility for execution of right-placement strategy

- Implementation support of the GAO process re-enginerring and automation efforts

Job Requirements:

Education and Experience:

- Bachelor- s/Master's Degree in Accounting, Chartered Accountant (CA) & preferred Certified Public Accountant (CPA)/MBA Finance) 10-12 years of progressive experience in R2R areas with major financial institutions.

- Extensive practical experience and knowledge of the US GAAP.

- In depth knowledge of Payroll processing along with US & Canadian Payroll Taxes including federal, state and local taxation.

- In depth knowledge of employee benefit withholding accounts.

- Experience of building and maintaining strong control environment (risk excellence, experience with SOX, RCSA controls, etc.), establishing policies, procedures and strong internal controls.

- Demonstrated leadership in improving/building-out the above process groups for multiple geographies and business areas

- Extensive experience of managing teams performing day-to-day accounting operations, month-end and quarter-end activities for the above areas of accounting

- Experience of leading re-engineering of R2R (record-to-report) processes and driving similar centralization of the end-to-end activities for the major financial institutions

Skills required :

- Proficiency in Microsoft Office suite (Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Word, Visio), advance levels of Excel (pivot tables, formulas, excel workbook maintenance best practices)

- Knowledge of Hyperion Essbase, Oracle Financials, Peoplesoft Payroll, Bloomberg Tax for payroll & other internally developed products such as Cash manager

- Conceptual understanding of company-wide financial architecture (GL, sub-GL technology, specialized tools) applicable to the above process groups of processes

- Senior-level communication skills, presentation skills, prior experience of interacting with multiple stakeholders (Legal Entity and Geography controllers) in NA, EMEA, APAC

- First or second level management expertise required

- Independent decision-making capabilities, demonstrated thought leadership

- Pride of ownership with the ability to deliver high quality results timely

- Self-motivated, self-assured, and self-managed

- Strong attention to details

- Problem solving skill

- Highly organized with ability to multi-task and work under high pressure deadlines

- Must be able to work in a fast paced environment