Group Bookkeeper

SUMMARY:
Position: Group Bookkeeper
Location: Montagu, Western Cape
Hospitality Hire is recruiting an experienced Group Bookkeeper for a permanent, full-time hospitality opportunity in Montagu, Western Cape.
Are you the kind of bookkeeper who takes pride in a clean set of books, spots a discrepancy before anyone asks about it and wants to understand the business behind the numbers?
We are looking for a confident, highly organised full-function Bookkeeper who can take ownership of the complete bookkeeping function across two separate trading entities.
This is a hands-on role for someone who knows how to take a set of books all the way to trial balance, accurately and independently, month after month.

POSITION INFO:
THE ROLE

You will be responsible for:
- Full-function bookkeeping for two separate entities
- Processing both ledgers through to trial balance
- Bank and card-merchant reconciliations
- Clearing and reconciling control accounts
- Daily revenue reconciliation across rooms, food and beverage
- Creditors and debtors management, including age analyses
- Preparing payment run schedules
- End-to-end payroll processing
- Monthly EMP201 preparation
- VAT preparation and reconciliation
- Stock and cost-of-sales entries
- Accruals and payroll journals
- Maintaining the fixed asset register and depreciation
- Maintaining clear separation of costs and transactions between entities
- Preparing a complete month-end file with supporting schedules
- Maintaining an accurate compliance calendar
- Working closely with the operational and external accounting teams.

WHAT WE NEED
This position requires someone who can genuinely own the ledger rather than simply capture transactions.

Essential Requirements

- Minimum 5 years’ full-function bookkeeping experience working in hotels
- Proven experience taking books independently to trial balance
- Strong bank, card-merchant and control account reconciliation experience
- Experience preparing and reconciling VAT returns
- Experience with monthly payroll submissions
- Strong end-to-end payroll processing experience
- Creditors and debtors management experience
- Experience with age analyses and payment runs
- Strong Excel skills, including lookups and pivot tables
- Ability to build reconciliations from raw data
- Recognised bookkeeping/accounting technician qualification OR equivalent demonstrable experience
- Ability to work accurately, independently and to strict monthly deadlines.

HIGHLY ADVANTAGEOUS

- Previous hotel, hospitality, restaurant or retail finance experience
- Experience reconciling daily revenue and stock
- Xero experience
- Multi-entity or multi-site bookkeeping experience
- Fixed asset register and depreciation experience
- Understanding of capital versus operating expenditure
- Afrikaans and English.
Systems used within the operation include Xero, Nightsbridge, Semper, Yoco, SimplePay and HubDoc. Experience with every system is not required, but you must be comfortable learning new technology and understanding how operational data flows into the accounting records.

THE PERSON WE WANT
We are looking for more than someone who processes transactions.
If you notice that food cost has suddenly moved by three percentage points, we want you to be the person who asks why before someone requests a report.
You should be naturally curious, methodical and comfortable raising concerns when something does not look right.
You will also work alongside an existing finance administrator and play an important role in sharing your knowledge, providing guidance and developing their bookkeeping capability over time.

POSITION DETAILS
Location: Montagu, Western Cape
Employment: Permanent
Hours: Monday to Friday, full-time and on-site
Start: As soon as a suitable candidate is available
Working arrangement: This is an on-site position and is not suitable for remote working.
Some flexibility will be required around month-end and statutory deadlines.

READY FOR A ROLE YOU CAN TRULY TAKE OWNERSHIP OF?
If you are an experienced Bookkeeper who loves clean reconciliations, accurate reporting and knowing that the numbers can be relied upon,

Hospitality Hire would like to hear from you.
This is an excellent long-term opportunity for someone who wants to become an integral part of a hospitality business and build strong institutional knowledge over time.
Apply with your updated CV and contactable references.
Shortlisted candidates should be prepared to complete a short practical bookkeeping exercise as part of the selection process.