Lead Accountant

SOUTRON GLOBAL, INC.
Lead Accountant
Group Finance · Multi-entity software business · Remote, United States or Canada

The company

Soutron Global builds and supports library, archive, and collections management software for the GLAM market — galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. We serve public libraries, archives including corporate archives, and corporate libraries. Customers include state library consortia, national and municipal archives, government ministries, and Fortune 500 corporate information centers.
The group has been assembled by acquisition and comprises Soutron, Auto-Graphics (VERSO, SHAREit), MINISIS, and Biblionix (Apollo, Artemis), operating across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in three currencies. Revenue is overwhelmingly recurring and retention is strong. The group is backed by Bloom Equity Partners.

Why this role exists

We would rather be direct than have you find this out in week two.
The finance function is small relative to the group around it. There is a Controller, a part-time Staff Accountant, and an Accounting Administrator, and they support four operating businesses on legacy systems while a NetSuite implementation replaces them. A revenue accounting seat is currently vacant. The close, the reconciliations, billing, collections, and the reporting all compete for the same few hours.
This role takes the execution. You own the close calendar and land it. You own the reconciliations and the schedules behind them. You own billing and collections. You supervise and develop the two people who process the transactions. And you carry the finance workstreams of the NetSuite migration for the areas you own — opening balances, sub-ledger tie-out, and the parallel run.

What you own

1. The monthly and quarterly close

• Own the close calendar across all group entities. Publish it, run it, and land it on the agreed day.
• Prepare and review journal entries, accruals, prepaids, deferred revenue, intercompany, and foreign exchange entries.
• Own the balance sheet reconciliations — a documented, reviewed reconciliation for every material account, every month, with supporting schedules a third party can follow without a conversation.
• Prepare the monthly reporting pack for the Controller’s review, with variance commentary that says what moved and why.
• Where two reports disagree, find the cause, fix it, and write down the reconciliation. This is a standing expectation of the role, not an occasional task.

2. Revenue accounting — execution under ASC 606

• Apply the group’s revenue recognition policy across SaaS subscriptions, hosted and on-premise licenses, support and maintenance, implementation and data migration services, training, and third-party pass-through.
• Own the deferred revenue and contract asset roll-forwards, reconciled to the contract population rather than to last month’s balance.
• Review new and renewing contracts against the revenue checklist and escalate anything that does not fit it — multi-element arrangements, consortium and statewide agreements, mid-term expansions, non-standard terms.
• Maintain the schedules that support the policy, and flag where the policy does not answer the question in front of you.

3. Order to cash, and collections in particular

• Own billing accuracy across renewals, new business, change orders, and professional services, and the handoff from contract administration into the ledger.
• Own the accounts receivable ledger and the collections process — aging discipline, a documented dunning cycle, escalation paths, and weekly reporting on aging and days sales outstanding.
• Be clear on what you are taking on: one legacy entity currently carries the large majority of its receivable book past 30 days. Improving that aging against a baseline agreed in month one is the single most measurable objective in this role, and it will require working with sales, customer success, and public sector procurement contacts — not just the ledger.
• Own accounts payable — approval workflow, vendor master integrity, payment runs, and 1099 and T4A reporting.

4. NetSuite — operate it, and get your areas across the line

• Carry the finance-side migration work for the areas you own: opening balance validation, sub-ledger tie-out, historical comparatives, and the parallel-run reconciliation.
• Operate the system day to day — general ledger, accounts receivable and payable, revenue module, multi-currency — and build the saved searches, reports, and dashboards that replace offline spreadsheets.
• Document what you configure and write the desk procedures, so the work is not dependent on you personally.

5. Supervision and process

• Supervise the Staff Accountant and the Accounting Administrator — allocate work, review output, set standards, and develop them. This is real people management, not work direction in name only.
• Write the desk procedures for the whole team. Where knowledge lives in one person’s head today, get it on paper.
• Recommend how the team should be structured as the group grows, and make the case for it.

6. Audit and control evidence

• Prepare the audit and review schedules, manage the request list, and clear items to a timetable.
• Support indirect tax compliance with advisers — US sales and use tax including software and SaaS nexus, Canadian GST/HST and provincial taxes, UK VAT, and state and provincial registrations.
• Execute the finance-side controls the group needs for SOC 2 and ISO 27001 readiness — evidenced approvals, documented segregation of duties in NetSuite, and access reviews for finance systems. Control design sits above you; operating the controls and producing the evidence is yours.

What we need you to have

Required

• Full ownership of a monthly close in a multi-entity environment, including reviewing other people’s work.
• Hands-on ASC 606 experience in a subscription software or SaaS business. You have prepared deferred revenue roll-forwards and worked multi-element contracts yourself. You understand the difference between a booking, an invoice, and revenue.
• NetSuite experience, hands-on. Migration or implementation exposure is materially preferred over long tenure as a routine user.
• Multi-currency and intercompany experience — you have prepared translation, remeasurement, and intercompany entries, not just read about them.
• Accounts receivable and collections ownership, with a track record of moving an aging profile you can describe in numbers.
• Supervisory experience — you have managed or closely reviewed at least one person’s work, including giving difficult feedback.
• Bachelor’s degree in accounting or finance and five or more years of progressive accounting experience.

Preferred

• CPA or CA, or actively pursuing it. We will support completion.
• Experience in a private-equity-backed business — monthly discipline and short-notice requests are normal here.
• Experience bringing an acquired set of books onto a group chart of accounts and close calendar.
• Cross-border US and Canada experience, including indirect tax in both.
• Advanced Excel and comfort with data — large reconciliations, Power Query, and enough reporting-tool fluency to answer your own questions.

How you work

• You reconcile rather than choose. You will find figures that do not agree. We need someone whose instinct is to find the cause and document it.
• You write things down. Procedures, schedules, and commentary that outlive the month they were produced in.
• You are comfortable being the most senior person in the detail. There is no one to hand a hard reconciliation to.
• You escalate early and plainly. Bad news travels fast to the Controller. That is expected and it is safe.

This is a remote opportunity.

Originally posted on Himalayas