Your Role

In most medium-sized companies, no one explains the numbers. They are created, sent, and filed – and the owner continues to make decisions based on gut feeling because no one translates for him what is in his own accounting.

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. For these companies, we handle accounting completely: ongoing processing with a high degree of automation, statutory accounting, and building on that, analysis, planning, and controlling. You lead your client base through this entire process – and don't give up the conversation about it.

For several years now, you have been responsible for closing the books of medium-sized clients – in a tax advisory or auditing firm, or in the accounting department of a company. You know the situation: the closing is done, clean, and on time – and someone else leads the conversation about it, or it doesn't happen at all. At Vogel, you will find the opposite: structures that support – established clients, long experience, strong growth basis – and at the same time a setup that moves forward every day. No corporate corset, no old boys' club without a growth ambition.

From day one, you will take over an existing client base and technically lead three to four Associates. You will report to the Senior Manager Accounting & Controlling, who is responsible for the standard of the line. The natural progression leads to a Senior Manager role with an independently developed client portfolio within 24 to 36 months.

Your Responsibility

Client Base and Closing

• Take over an existing client base and manage it independently – ongoing accounting, monthly and annual financial statements, contact person for owners and managing directors.

• Be responsible for the statutory closing of your clients as an independent result for the entrepreneur. You prepare the statutory part, our tax advisors are responsible for the tax part and the declaration.

• Drive the degree of automation of your mandates further, instead of managing manual work. Your benchmark is not that the numbers are correct in the end, but how little manual effort was needed for it.

Steering and Consulting the Entrepreneur

• Conduct the management report (BWA) or quarterly review meetings with your clients yourself and translate the numbers into a course of action. Your benchmark: After the meeting, they can make a decision, not just repeat a number.

• Build planning and steering based on ongoing accounting – forecast, liquidity planning, cost and performance accounting, contribution margin – and turn them into services that provide recurring value instead of being reinvented for each client.

• Recognize the occasions when another department is needed – tax structuring, financing, succession, valuation – and actively bring them together, instead of waiting for the client to ask.

Team Leadership

• Provide technical leadership to your three to four Associates – review their work, mentoring, escalation decisions, performance reviews in coordination with the Senior Manager.

• Guide the Associates to be able to conduct client discussions themselves – not just deliver the numbers.

• Actively participate in hiring at the Associate level and set the tone in the team: hierarchical in decision-making, flat in communication, autonomous in execution. Performance is celebrated here, not hidden – those who are good will find space for it here, without political camouflage and without consensus theater.

Your Prospects

What you will have delivered after 6 months:

• You will be managing the assigned client base with full responsibility, including annual financial statements.

• You will have conducted the first ten management report or steering meetings without senior supervision.

• You will know your Associates personally and have conducted the first performance reviews yourself.

What you will have delivered after 12 months:

• You will have made at least ten of your clients measurably more efficient in ongoing accounting.

• You will have established a steering function beyond bookkeeping for at least five clients – forecast, contribution margin, or liquidity planning that the entrepreneur uses on an ongoing basis.

• You will have referred at least three occasions to other departments – tax structuring, financing, succession, or valuation.

What you will have delivered after 24 months:

• You will have independently developed your client base and expanded it through your own acquisition or cross-selling.

• You will have built a recognizable personal specialization – an industry, a planning methodology, an automation topic.

• You will be the escalation point of contact for your line in standard cases and a candidate for the Senior Manager level.

Where the position is developing:

The next step is Senior Manager Accounting & Controlling (management career) – however, this requires an independently developed client portfolio, not just additional years of professional experience. We know of no automatic progression of 'more experience equals higher level'. Beyond the Senior Manager level, the Director path opens up along our career framework.

What you bring

Experience & Track Record

• You have prepared and been responsible for the financial statements of medium-sized capital and partnership companies for several years – in a tax advisory or auditing firm, or in the accounting department of a company.

• In doing so, you were not just involved in the figures, but also personally represented the results to clients or management.

• A professional examination is explicitly not a prerequisite – this role is financial statement and economic, not tax-related. If you are pursuing the auditor's exam, we will support you in doing so.

• Profiles that do not fit the above description, but have their own responsibility for financial statements with a consulting component, are explicitly invited – we evaluate based on contribution, not label. Specifically: Certified accountant with several years of personal responsibility for financial statements who already conducts client discussions; controller from upper-medium-sized businesses with solid accounting experience; tax advisor whose work is predominantly accounting in practice. The indicated range is not a negotiation margin, but a profile scale. The lower end represents the transition to the first role with an independent client base and leadership responsibility. Those who already fully manage a comparable client base today and lead a team technically start in the upper third. The range indicated above applies to the primary profile. Those with a different background will start at a different market price and converge after twelve months of proven performance to the role level – the logic behind this is detailed in our compensation principles.

Skills & Working Method

• You master HGB (German Commercial Code) accounting in the medium-sized sector with its real points of contention – inventory valuation, unfinished work, provisions, shareholder accounts.

• You read a company from its numbers and translate that into a course of action that an owner understands and supports.

• You master the mechanics of planning and forecasting – scenarios, liquidity, contribution margin – and can also implement them in a company that didn't have them before.

• You work with AI as a standard tool – plausibility checks, analysis of account movements, setting up planning logic, drafting. Repetitive analyses are a challenge for automation for you, not a fate.

Mindset & Personality

• You are a numbers person and a people person in one – you gain the trust of an entrepreneur and back it up with solid analysis.

• You enjoy developing junior colleagues and see their progress as part of your own results.

• You have the humility to learn from practitioners. The entrepreneur with thirty years in the market knows things about their business that are not in any model.

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

What you will NOT find with us

• No figures without conversation. Anyone who prepares the closing and then hands it over is in the wrong place here. You will personally present your figures to the entrepreneur.

• No pure controlling without balance sheet responsibility. You are responsible for the closing yourself. Interpreting figures without being accountable for them does not exist here.

• No accounting back office without a shaping component. Data entry and reconciliation are largely automated. What remains is assessment, consulting, and the question of how far automation can go.

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

• No partner company with competing self-interests. We are a company with a one-firm logic – one brand, one culture, one hiring bar. No management by committee, no consensus for its own sake.

FAQ

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

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

2. How are the salary bands to be understood?

Intentionally broad – and indicated at every point. We differentiate based on track record and market value, not on closing: 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 true: those looking for 9-to-5 are not our first choice. We are looking for people who work intensively out of their own motivation because the tasks are worthwhile. How you distribute your time is largely up to you. What we share: We work together in person – culture, sparring, and the best ideas arise 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 by profile. For entry-level roles (internship, working student, career entry), two interviews and a short work sample are usually sufficient; experienced roles are a bit more extensive. For selected senior roles, we are considering incorporating a joint workday in the future so that both sides can get to know each other better. Always applicable: scheduled appointments, prompt decision, substantial feedback – regardless of the outcome.

5. How does variable compensation work?

Linked quarterly to performance, 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 manager: 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. Career entry is not a special 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 joint lunch is an open daily offer – not mandatory; whoever wants to join can, anyone 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: thoughtful 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). A brief context is sufficient: who you are thinking of, for which role, why. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it must be substantial.

Compensation: €108,375 – €133,875 • Fix: €85k – €105k · Bonus: €23,375k – €28,875k · EV: €99,45k – €122,85k

• • OTE €108,375 – €133,875 • Fix: €85k – €105k · Bonus: €23,375k – €28,875k · EV: €99,45k – €122,85k

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