Director of Finance

Alonso & Alonso•San Antonio, TX

12d•Remote

About The Position

Alonso & Alonso is a rapidly growing, family-built immigration law firm with a large, distributed workforce across the United States and Latin America. Our organization operates with the size and complexity of an established national business while maintaining the pace, adaptability, and entrepreneurial mindset of a startup. The Director of Finance will be responsible for developing and executing the firm’s financial strategy, overseeing accounting and financial reporting, managing client trust and IOLTA accounting, leading the revenue cycle and treasury functions, and managing financial systems and controls. This role also involves department leadership and executive partnership, requiring the assessment and recommendation of a scalable organizational structure for the Finance division, recruitment and development of high-performing Finance professionals, and the establishment of clear performance expectations. The Director will also be responsible for developing concise executive financial reporting and partnering with department leaders to strengthen budget ownership and financial accountability.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, or a related field.
Ten or more years of progressively responsible accounting and Finance experience.
At least five years of experience leading accounting, Finance, or FP&A teams.
Demonstrated experience performing or overseeing Controller-level responsibilities.
Demonstrated experience leading financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, financial modeling, and business analysis.
Meaningful hands-on experience with client trust, IOLTA, escrow, fiduciary, custodial, or similarly regulated fund accounting.
Strong knowledge of three-way trust-account reconciliations, client-level ledgers, fund segregation, and related internal controls.
Strong command of GAAP, financial statements, month-end close, balance-sheet reconciliations, cash flow, and internal controls.
Experience building or materially transforming a Finance function within a rapidly growing or operationally complex organization.
Experience with multi-entity accounting, consolidated reporting, intercompany transactions, billing, collections, payroll accounting, and treasury.
Advanced financial-modeling, forecasting, analytical, and Excel skills.
Experience implementing, stabilizing, or optimizing an enterprise accounting or financial-management system.
Demonstrated ability to communicate complex financial information and recommendations to executive and nonfinancial stakeholders.
Strong leadership, judgment, confidentiality, organizational, and decision-making skills.
Ability to manage competing priorities and remain effective in a fast-paced, startup-style environment.

Nice To Haves

Certified Public Accountant designation.
MBA, master’s degree, or other relevant advanced credential.
Finance leadership experience within a law firm, legal-services organization, or high-volume professional-services business.
Direct experience overseeing law-firm trust and IOLTA accounting.
Experience with Workday Financial Management, Workday Accounting Center, Litify, Salesforce-based legal platforms, or comparable enterprise systems.
Experience supporting a large, distributed workforce consisting of domestic employees and international contractors.
Experience with multi-state operations, cross-border activity, related entities, and intercompany allocations.
Experience working within a founder-led, family-owned, private, or entrepreneurial organization.
Experience leading a Finance system implementation or major financial transformation.
Bilingual proficiency in English and Spanish is preferred.

Responsibilities

Develop and execute the firm’s financial strategy in alignment with organizational priorities, projected growth, and long-term sustainability.
Serve as a strategic financial advisor to the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Firm Partners, and executive leadership.
Lead annual budgeting, rolling forecasts, long-term financial planning, and scenario modeling.
Build integrated financial models connecting contract volume, client deposits, payment plans, collections, case progression, revenue recognition, staffing, marketing investment, and operating expenses.
Evaluate the financial impact of new practice areas, geographic expansion, pricing changes, compensation programs, technology investments, and other strategic initiatives.
Analyze financial performance by practice area, case type, department, office, entity, and other meaningful business dimensions.
Translate complex financial information into clear recommendations regarding growth, investment, cost management, profitability, and financial risk.
Oversee the accuracy, completeness, and integrity of the firm’s financial records and reporting.
Lead monthly, quarterly, and annual close processes, including journal entries, accruals, account reconciliations, intercompany activity, and management review.
Ensure the timely preparation of income statements, balance sheets, cash-flow statements, departmental reports, and executive financial packages.
Maintain and continuously improve the firm’s chart of accounts, financial worktags, cost centers, reporting hierarchy, and accounting policies.
Ensure appropriate accounting treatment for client payments, deposits, payment plans, refunds, cancellations, deferred revenue, earned revenue, and related transactions.
Oversee accounting activity across multiple entities, departments, offices, and operating locations.
Identify and resolve legacy balances, unreconciled accounts, reporting inconsistencies, and material accounting issues.
Coordinate year-end activities with external auditors, tax professionals, banking partners, insurance providers, and other professional advisors.
Provide executive oversight of the firm’s client trust and IOLTA accounting practices.
Ensure client funds remain properly segregated from operating funds and are handled in accordance with applicable bar rules, banking requirements, client agreements, and firm policies.
Require accurate client-level trust ledgers and timely three-way reconciliations between bank balances, trust-account general ledgers, and client subsidiary ledgers.
Establish controls over trust deposits, earned-fee transfers, refunds, disbursements, outstanding checks, and residual client balances.
Maintain clear review and escalation procedures for unreconciled items, unidentified deposits, negative balances, returned payments, duplicate transactions, and other trust-account exceptions.
Prevent commingling, premature transfers, unauthorized activity, overdrafts, unsupported disbursements, and the use of one client’s funds for another client.
Maintain complete, accurate, and audit-ready trust-account records and coordinate internal reviews, external audits, and regulatory inquiries.
Train Finance employees and operational stakeholders on trust-account responsibilities, internal controls, and mandatory escalation requirements.
Oversee billing, client receivables, collections, cash application, refunds, payment plans, chargebacks, and related revenue-cycle activities.
Establish reliable contract-to-cash reporting covering signed contracts, initial deposits, recurring payments, outstanding balances, delinquencies, refunds, cancellations, and collected cash.
Evaluate collection rates, realization rates, payment-plan performance, cash conversion, and accounts-receivable aging.
Develop clear ownership and escalation procedures for aged accounts, write-offs, account adjustments, credits, refunds, and payment-term changes.
Establish and maintain a rolling 13-week cash-flow forecast and longer-range liquidity projections.
Oversee operating cash, client trust cash, bank accounts, treasury activities, merchant-processing costs, and banking relationships.
Maintain sufficient liquidity to support payroll, contractor payments, taxes, vendor obligations, debt service, and strategic investments.
Implement fraud-prevention and approval controls covering ACH transactions, wires, checks, refunds, vendor payments, corporate cards, and changes to banking instructions.
Serve as the senior Finance owner for the firm’s accounting systems, financial integrations, reporting structures, and financial data.
Lead the continued implementation, stabilization, and optimization of Workday Financial Management and Workday Accounting Center.
Establish financial controls over data exchanged between Workday, Litify, payroll systems, contractor platforms, banking platforms, expense-management tools, and other operational systems.
Ensure invoices, payments, refunds, case stages, revenue activity, client-fund transactions, and financial worktags are mapped and reconciled consistently.
Define authoritative sources of financial information and reduce reliance on disconnected spreadsheets, undocumented processes, and individual institutional knowledge.
Develop a scalable internal-control framework, including approval matrices, transaction limits, access controls, and segregation-of-duties requirements.
Conduct periodic reviews of financial processes to identify control weaknesses, fraud exposure, reporting risks, and opportunities for improvement.
Partner with Information Technology, Legal Operations, People Operations, Business Intelligence, and external consultants to improve financial-system stability, reporting accuracy, and data integrity.
Assess the current Finance division and recommend a scalable organizational structure aligned with the firm’s future needs.
Establish clear functional ownership across accounting, trust accounting, FP&A, billing, receivables, collections, payroll, accounts payable, treasury, and Finance systems.
Recruit, develop, coach, and retain high-performing Finance professionals.
Establish measurable performance expectations, review standards, service-level expectations, career paths, and accountability measures.
Develop succession plans and cross-training so critical financial processes are documented and supported by qualified backup personnel.
Build a Finance culture grounded in accuracy, urgency, ownership, confidentiality, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Develop concise executive financial reporting that identifies material variances, emerging risks, corrective actions, and strategic opportunities.
Partner with department leaders to strengthen budget ownership, financial accountability, and operational decision-making.