Accounts Receivable Team Lead

Job Description

Job Purpose: Describe below the primary purpose and function of this job.

Change marking: revised or newly added wording is shown in blue with yellow highlighting. Proposed role split: 80% operational delivery / 20% people management.

The Accounts Receivable Team Lead is a hands-on operational leadership role, with approximately 80% of the role dedicated to the direct execution and ownership of Accounts Receivable and Order-to-Cash activities and approximately 20% dedicated to people management and team leadership.

The role manages an assigned portfolio and performs defined operational tasks alongside other team members, including billing support, collections, cash application, account reconciliation, dispute management, customer account maintenance, credit control and withholding tax administration, based on the final team set-up and business needs.

In addition, the role coordinates the daily priorities of their direct reports, balances the team’s workload, provides day-to-day coaching, handles first-level escalations and supports consistent execution across assigned markets. The Team Leader will be responsible for assessing employee performance, providing timely feedback as well as performing formal mid-year and annual reviews.

The position works closely with AR Coordinators, Accounting, Controlling, Treasury, Sales, Tax and external customers, and contributes to process improvements, controls, reporting, transitions and stabilization activities while maintaining primary accountability for operational delivery.

Key Roles & Responsibilities: List up to 7 key roles and responsibilities of this job (in the order of importance)

1. Operational Execution and Coordination (approximately 80% of role)

Personally execute and own an assigned share of day-to-day Accounts Receivable activities and customer or market responsibilities, in line with the workload allocation applied to other team members. The exact portfolio and task split will be defined based on the final operating model, team capacity, language requirements and business priorities.

Operational responsibilities may include:

Billing support and billing issue resolution

Collections and customer follow-up

Cash application and payment allocation

Receivable reconciliation

Customer account maintenance

Dispute management

Credit control activities

Withholding tax administration

Operational reporting and follow-up of open items

Alongside individual delivery, coordinate daily priorities, monitor workload distribution and support practical resource balancing across the AR team. The Team Lead remains part of the operational capacity and is not a fully supervisory role.

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Apply established policies, procedures and internal controls in the Team Lead’s own operational work and support consistent compliance across the team.

Perform and review operational activities and exceptions within the assigned scope, ensuring that reconciliation, collections, billing and cash application activities are completed accurately and consistently.

Identify control gaps, raise risks and recommend corrective actions where required. Support SOX-related controls and audit requirements.

3. Operational Issue and Escalation Management

Resolve operational issues within the assigned portfolio and act as the first point of contact for team-level operational escalations.

Coordinate the resolution of payment application issues, customer disputes, billing discrepancies, collection challenges, reconciliation differences and process exceptions.

Work with internal stakeholders to ensure timely resolution, while escalating material risks, capacity constraints and unresolved matters to the Accounts Receivable Manager.

4. Operational Performance and KPI Support

Maintain visibility of operational performance for the assigned scope while continuing to deliver the Team Lead’s own portfolio.

Monitor relevant indicators such as aging performance, collection effectiveness, cash application timeliness, billing accuracy, open items, disputes and backlog levels.

Provide factual operational input, identify trends and recommend actions to the Accounts Receivable Manager. Support KPI reporting and performance measurement activities without shifting the role away from its primary operational focus.

5. People Management, Knowledge Management and Team Support (approximately 20% of role)

Provide day-to-day people leadership for assigned direct reports, including regular one-to-one discussions, objective setting, feedback, coaching, development support, performance follow-up, workload discussions and support with attendance or routine people matters in line with company processes.

Support onboarding, cross-training, documentation updates, knowledge transfer and best-practice sharing.

Promote collaboration, accountability and consistent ways of working across markets. Escalate formal or complex people matters to the Accounts Receivable Manager and HR as appropriate.

People-management responsibilities are expected to represent approximately 20% of the role and must be balanced with the Team Lead’s assigned operational delivery.

6. Process Improvement and Transformation Support

Contribute operational expertise to testing, system implementations, automation initiatives, process redesign and shared-service optimization activities.

Identify practical improvement opportunities arising from daily operational work and support implementation, documentation and adoption.

Participation in projects is planned around operational priorities and does not remove the Team Lead’s ongoing responsibility for an assigned operational workload.

7. Transition and Stabilization Support

Support transition, migration, knowledge transfer and stabilization activities while maintaining delivery of the assigned operational scope.

Help integrate new activities into the AR operating model through hands-on process execution, issue identification, documentation and practical support to team members.

Key Competencies Required (Behaviours and Qualities that need to be displayed in the role)

• Ability to provide day-to-day guidance, coaching and support to direct reports

• Excellent organizational and prioritization abilities

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills

• Customer-focused and service-oriented mindset

• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability

• High level of accountability, accuracy, and compliance awareness

• Ability to coordinate priorities and support team performance in a fast-paced Shared Services environment

• Change management and continuous improvement mindset

• Ability to manage competing priorities and stakeholder expectations