Finance Automation Lead
About The Position
Instawork is seeking a builder to own the order-to-cash process and lead finance automation across the Finance team. This role is split between managing billing, collections, and cash conversion, and automating finance workflows beyond accounts receivable (AR), including close, reconciliations, Accounts Payable, treasury, and reporting. The position involves overseeing offshore collections analysts, collaborating with Account Managers, Sales, and business partners on billing and collection issues, and developing AI-powered workflows to reduce manual work. The role requires hands-on learning of processes before redesigning them for efficiency. This position reports directly to the Controller and is based in the San Francisco office, following an onsite work model requiring in-office presence 5 days a week.
Requirements
- Recent, demonstrable experience building AI/LLM-powered or agentic workflows that run in a real operation and that people still use.
- Working knowledge of core finance processes (order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, month-end close, reconciliations) and how they connect to the ERP.
- Strong quantitative and problem-solving skills with advanced Excel/Google Sheets.
- Experience with workflow automation or integration tools (e.g., Workato, Zapier, n8n, Make) or APIs.
- Experience leading or developing people, including remote or offshore teams.
- Confidence working directly with customers and Sales on billing and collection issues, and influencing teams you don't manage.
- Ownership, urgency, and comfort working on messy, ambiguous problems in a fast-paced environment.
Nice To Haves
- Experience in AR, billing, collections, or broader finance operations.
- Familiarity with systems such as NetSuite, Upflow, Salesforce, or VMS and procurement portals (e.g., Fieldglass, Beeline, Coupa, Ariba).
- Familiarity with internal controls, SOX, or supporting external audits.
Responsibilities
- Own the collections strategy and the AR balance, with DSO and the cash conversion cycle as the main measures, and run a weekly cash review with Finance leadership.
- Work directly with Sales, Account Management, and our business partners to resolve billing questions, disputes, and past-due balances.
- Serve as the escalation point for enterprise, MSA, and VMS accounts.
- Find the root causes of late cash, such as billing errors, account setup that doesn't match the contract, portal approval delays, and drive fixes with Sales, Ops, and Product.
- Own invoicing setup QA and cash application, and support month-end close with AR reconciliations and reserves.
- Oversee and coach our collections analysts in the Philippines, setting priorities and performance expectations and shifting their work toward exception handling as automation takes over the routine flow.
- Establish, maintain and own the credit approval process including running credit checks and working with Sales on creative credit options for potential new partners (customers).
- Build AI agents and workflows for collections prioritization and outreach, remittance matching, dispute triage, VMS portal tracking, and pre-send invoice checks.
- Partner with the Accounting & FP&A (Finance) team to map manual workflows, rank automation opportunities by time saved and risk reduced, and manage a prioritized backlog.
- Build and deploy AI/LLM-powered agents and workflows across Finance, such as bank and balance sheet reconciliations, journal entry preparation, accruals, close task tracking, and variance analysis.
- Automate procure-to-pay and spend workflows, including invoice intake and coding, approvals, vendor onboarding, and payment runs.
- Automate cash reporting, including daily cash positions, bank and payout reconciliations, cash forecast inputs, and lender compliance reporting.
- Build integrations and data flows between NetSuite, our billing and payment systems, banks, and BI tools, and replace manual spreadsheets with automated dashboards and reports.
- Design human-in-the-loop controls, audit trails, and documentation so automated outputs are accurate, auditable, and ready for external audit.
- Train the Finance team on new tools, write runbooks, and own what you ship in production.
Benefits
- Variety of medical, dental, and vision plans with coverage beginning on the date of hire
- Flexible paid time off
- At least 8 paid company holidays annually
- Phone stipend
- Commuter stipend
- Supplemental pay on qualified leaves
- Employee health savings accounts (HSA) contribution
- Flexible spending plans
- 401K plan
- Perkspot - discount program through Lumity
- Equity in the form of stock options
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
Education Level
No Education Listed
