Your Role

In most companies, the month-end closing process is a chain of manual steps that no one has fully documented. It works as long as the same people do it. As soon as a new location is added, it breaks.

Vogel is one of the most successful medium-sized consulting firms in Germany — several thousand medium-sized companies trust us with their tax, commercial, and strategic matters. Based on this, we are building the leading consulting platform for the German medium-sized sector: we grow organically and through acquisitions, consolidate a fragmented market, and integrate each new entity into a common setup. Each acquisition brings new companies, new consolidation circles, and new reporting requirements. This role ensures that our finance department can withstand this without growing by one position with each location.

You have completed your studies, can handle numbers, and are annoyed by work that a machine could do better. You don't want to join a corporate finance department where you spend three years preparing the same part of a report. You want to understand how numbers are generated and then ensure that they are generated faster and more cleanly. At Vogel, you will find a well-established financial structure that needs to prove itself and a company that moves forward every day.

Your Responsibility

Accounting and Closing Activities

• Participate in the month-end and year-end closing of our companies — accruals, reconciliations, consolidation steps.

• Take responsibility for your own closing areas and ensure they are completed on time. A closing that is two days late is worthless for decision-making.

• Ensure the auditability of your work. Anyone should be able to understand your postings without your assistance.

Planning, Analysis, and Key Figures

• Build and maintain our planning and analysis models — cost centers, location results, utilization, variance analyses.

• Prepare key figures for management in such a way that they lead to a decision, not just an acknowledgment.

• Explain variances instead of just reporting them. A number without a cause is only half an answer.

Automation of Financial Operations

• Automate recurring steps in our financial processes — data transfers from DATEV, reconciliation routines, report generation, invoice approvals.

• Build data pipelines so that analyses are not manually assembled each time. Repetitive tasks here are an incentive for automation, not a destiny.

• Document every automation in such a way that someone after you can operate and repair it.

Your Prospects

What you will have delivered after 6 months:

• You will be responsible for your own closing areas and complete them on time without being asked.

• You will have taken over our analysis models and improved at least five of them noticeably.

• You will have automated at least three recurring manual closing tasks.

What you will have delivered after 12 months:

• You will have measurably reduced the turnaround time of our month-end closing and can prove how.

• You will be fully responsible for preparing key figures for at least five locations.

• You will have put at least ten automations in financial operations into productive use.

What you will have delivered after 24 months:

• You will be independently responsible for a defined area of our financial operations and be the point of contact there.

• You will have co-responsible for the financial side during the integration of an acquired company.

• You will be a candidate for the next Manager position in Finance.

Where the position is heading:

The next step is Manager Finance & Accounting. This requires independently managed responsibility for an area, not just additional years of professional experience. From there, two paths lead further: the specialist career path with depth in consolidation and modeling, or the management career path with your own team.

What you bring with you

Experience & Track Record

• You have completed a degree with a focus on accounting, controlling, finance, or business informatics.

• You have gained initial practical experience in accounting — an internship in accounting, controlling, auditing, or transaction advisory.

• You have already worked with numbers for which someone else was responsible and know what diligence means in this field.

• Profiles that do not fit the above criteria but bring numerical substance and automation experience are expressly invited — we evaluate based on contribution, not on labels. Specifically: Tax assistants with subsequent studies who know financial accounting from the inside; graduates from mathematics, physics, or business informatics with an interest in accounting; people who have taught themselves automation and applied it in a commercial role. The stated range refers to the primary profile. Those with a different background will start at a different market price and converge to the role level after twelve months of proven performance — the logic behind this is outlined in our compensation principles.

Skills & Work Style

• You master Excel at a level that goes beyond PivotTables — dynamic consolidation logic, scenario models, robust data architectures.

• You automate with scripts or an automation environment. Python or SQL are a clear plus, as are DATEV skills.

• You work with AI as a natural tool — analysis, reconciliation routines, document checking, drafting of explanations.

• You explain numbers in such a way that someone without an accounting background understands the consequences.

Mindset & Personality

• You have a natural aversion to inaccuracy — reliable decisions cannot be made on unreliable numbers.

• You pursue a deviation until you have understood it, instead of filing it away as a rounding difference.

• You have the humility to learn from practitioners. The colleague who has been doing the closing for fifteen years knows the exceptions that your model does not cover.

• You strive to set the highest standard in everything you deliver — not because someone is checking it, but because mediocrity personally bothers you.

What you won't find with us

• No purely back-office accounting role. You will work visibly with management, corporate development, and operations — Finance is a shaping function here.

• No corporate finance department with the same report part for three years. Your area of responsibility grows with every location we add.

• No setup where automation runs as a special project. Automation is part of your daily work, not a topic for quiet weeks.

• No corporate corset where you wait for promotions. Growth here comes from contribution, not years of service.

• No exit into a 45-hour week. Closing times are closing times. However, the rest of the month is paced differently.

FAQ

1. What is Vogel — and where do you work?

Vogel is one of Germany's leading medium-sized consultancies — a family business since 1959, from Aalen — and is building the leading consulting platform for the medium-sized sector. We are growing at several locations: in Aalen/Ostwürttemberg as our established headquarters and in Munich as a new hub. At both locations, we are looking for people across all functions — from tax consulting and general consulting to the strategic teams building the platform.

2. How should the salary bands be understood?

Intentionally broad — and indicated at every level. We differentiate based on track record and market value, not on graduation: scarce, highly sought-after profiles at the upper end, less scarce ones at the lower end. We calibrate exclusively on the market — two people with similar experience can earn differently with us.

3. How much — and how — do you work at Vogel?

We measure by what you achieve, not by hours. However, it's also honest: if you're looking for a 9-to-5 job, we're not the first choice. We are looking for people who work intensely driven by their own initiative because the tasks are worthwhile. How you allocate your time is largely up to you. What we share: We work together in person — culture, sparring, and the best ideas emerge from daily proximity. We are not a remote company and do not have extensive home office policies; individual remote days are not a problem.

4. How does the application process work?

Lean, fast, transparent — and tiered according to profile. For entry-level roles (internship, working student, entry-level professional), two interviews and a short work sample are usually sufficient; experienced roles run a bit more extensively. For selected senior roles, we are exploring the possibility of incorporating a joint working day in the future so that both sides can get to know each other better. Always: scheduled appointments, swift decisions, substantive feedback — regardless of the outcome.

5. How does variable compensation work?

Tied to performance quarterly, evaluated qualitatively. The scale increases with the level: up to 20% Associate, 27.5% Manager, 35% Senior Manager, 42.5% Director, 50% VP. The expected value for good performance — you meet the requirements, set your own accents, pass the keeper test — is around 50% of the maximum; the maximum bonus is not the norm. The focus is on a holistic assessment by your supervisor: ownership, quality, learning curve, collaboration, impact.

6. How do I develop myself — what career paths are there?

Two active paths: Mastery (technical depth, expert career) and Pioneer (leadership, management). You choose the direction after onboarding, usually in years 1-3. Entry-level professional is not a separate path, but the early part of the same journey — from working student or intern to Associate, for the best without a new application process.

7. Team, Culture, Vacation?

A shared lunch is an open daily offer — not mandatory; whoever wants to join can, everyone can eat at any time. In addition, dinners, social events, and offsites at regular intervals — not as a mandatory program, but because a good team also shares time outside of work. Benefits: well-thought-out and substantial, not symbolic. Vacation: 28 days.

8. I know someone — is there a referral bonus?

Yes — €2,500 for each successfully filled position (no internships). Short context is enough: who you are thinking of, for which role, why. It doesn't have to be perfect, but substantive.

Compensation: €66K – €79.2K • Fix: €55k – €66k · Bonus: €11k – €13.2k · EV: €62.7k – €75.24k

• • OTE €66K – €79.2K • Fix: €55k – €66k · Bonus: €11k – €13.2k · EV: €62.7k – €75.24k

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