Account Receivable Income Officer

An Accounts Receivable Income Officer makes sure money owed to an organisation actually arrives and is recorded correctly. That means raising invoices, chasing late payers, allocating incoming payments to the right customer accounts and reconciling what the bank shows against what the finance system says. The role sits in a finance or income team, serving internal budget holders and the organisation's customers, tenants, students or service users depending on the sector.

Starting salary: £23k–£30k
Live graduate jobs: Search all jobs
Main way in: Direct application to a finance assistant, income officer or…
They usually ask for: A degree is often welcomed but frequently not required

Approximate graduate salary

Typically somewhere around £23,000–£30,000 to start, though this varies widely - public sector and charity roles often sit at the lower end, London and larger private-sector finance teams higher, and salaries rise once you are part-qualified.

What you'd actually do

Raising and issuing invoices to customers, tenants, funders or other payers, and making sure the details (amounts, VAT treatment, purchase order references) are right before they go out
Allocating incoming payments - matching bank receipts, direct debits, card payments and BACS transfers to the correct invoice or account, and investigating anything that doesn't match
Chasing overdue payments by phone and email, agreeing payment plans where someone genuinely can't pay in full, and escalating persistent non-payers to a credit control lead or debt recovery team
Running and reviewing the aged debt report (a list of everything owed, grouped by how overdue it is) and explaining the movements to a finance manager

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Reconciling income accounts - checking that the money in the bank, the sales ledger and the general ledger all tell the same story, and tracking down discrepancies
Dealing with queries from customers and from internal colleagues, such as why an invoice was issued, why a credit note is needed, or whether a payment has landed
Month-end tasks: posting journals, preparing bad debt provision figures, and producing income summaries for budget holders

How graduates get in

Direct application to a finance assistant, income officer or credit control role - by far the most common route. Many of these posts are advertised openly rather than through graduate schemes, and are entry level or require a year or so of office experience.
Starting in a broader finance assistant or accounts payable role and moving across to the receivable/income side internally. Very common, particularly in local government, housing associations, the NHS and universities, where internal transfers are normal.
Via a finance graduate scheme at a larger employer, where receivable/income work is one rotation among several. Less common as a permanent destination - schemes usually rotate you through management accounts, payables and reporting too.
Through an AAT (Association of Accounting Technicians) qualification, often started while working. Some employers prefer AAT-qualified or part-qualified candidates over graduates with no accounting background.

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Temping through a recruitment agency into a finance department. Genuinely common in this part of finance, and short contracts frequently convert to permanent roles.
Apprenticeship routes (accounts/finance assistant or assistant accountant apprenticeships) exist and overlap with graduate entry - a graduate can sometimes be taken on under a higher-level apprenticeship that funds professional study.

What employers ask for

A degree is often welcomed but frequently not required - this varies a lot. Public sector and housing employers often specify GCSE maths and English plus relevant experience, while some private sector employers ask for a 2:2 or above in any subject.
Where a degree subject is specified, accounting, finance, economics or business are the usual suggestions, but plenty of people enter from unrelated subjects. The subject matters far less than being comfortable with numbers and systems.
Study support towards AAT is commonly offered or expected. Some employers will support ACCA or CIMA (chartered accountancy qualifications) if you want to progress beyond income work, though this is more usual in larger finance teams.
Practical experience with a finance system or ERP (enterprise resource planning software - the system that holds the organisation's financial records) is often asked for, but training is usually given. Listing any system you've used helps.

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Solid spreadsheet ability, specifically lookups, filtering and pivot tables, is asked for in most adverts.
For public-sector and housing roles, expect a basic DBS check in some posts and an emphasis on handling vulnerable customers sensitively, especially where arrears involve rent or care charges.

Skills that matter

Reconciliation and attention to detail

A payment allocated to the wrong account creates a false debt for one customer and a false credit for another, and untangling it later takes far longer than getting it right first time.

Spreadsheet work (lookups, pivot tables, filtering large exports)

Most of the investigative work - matching a bank statement against a ledger export, or splitting an aged debt list by team - happens in a spreadsheet rather than in the finance system itself.

Difficult conversations about money

You will phone people who owe money and sometimes cannot pay, and you need to be firm about the debt while staying calm and professional, often following a set escalation process.

Understanding of double-entry bookkeeping and VAT basics

You need to know why a credit note and a refund are different, and what a journal does, otherwise you cannot explain or correct your own postings.

Query resolution and tenacity

Most of the job is unexplained differences - a payment with no reference, an invoice disputed by a customer - and progress depends on chasing them down rather than leaving them on the report.

Clear written communication with non-finance colleagues

Budget holders and service managers often don't understand the ledger, so you have to explain in plain terms why income hasn't been recognised or why they need to approve a write-off.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Senior Income Officer or Senior Credit Controller - taking on the harder accounts, the larger debts, and some checking of colleagues' work. Typically a couple of years in, though this varies widely by employer size.
Income Team Leader or Credit Control Manager - supervising a small team, owning the aged debt target, and reporting on income performance to senior finance staff.
Sideways into broader finance: management accounts assistant, finance business partner support, or assistant accountant. This usually requires starting AAT, ACCA or CIMA study and is the main route if you want to move beyond income-specific work.
Specialist routes - revenues and benefits in local government, rent and arrears management in housing, or patient/overseas income in the NHS. These can lead to senior sector-specific roles without the full chartered route.
With a completed chartered qualification, the path opens to Financial Accountant, Finance Manager and above. Timelines here vary enormously depending on when you start studying and whether your employer funds it.

What people get wrong

“It's just chasing unpaid bills all day.”

Chasing is only part of it. A lot of the work is accounting: allocating receipts, reconciling the sales ledger to the general ledger, posting journals, calculating bad debt provisions and explaining income figures at month-end.

“It's an aggressive debt-collection job.”

In most UK organisations, particularly housing, councils, charities and the NHS, the emphasis is on affordability and early intervention - agreeing realistic payment plans and signposting to support - with formal recovery as a last resort handled by a separate team.

“You need an accounting degree.”

Many people in these roles came in from unrelated degrees or from administrative work and picked up AAT on the job. Employers tend to weight numeracy, systems confidence and reliability over the subject on your certificate.

“It's a dead-end admin job with nowhere to go.”

It's one of the most common entry points into professional accountancy in the UK, because you learn the sales ledger end of double-entry properly and many employers will fund AAT or chartered study from this seat.

Where this varies

The job differs a lot by sector. In housing associations and local authorities, "income" usually means rent, council tax or service charges, and the work is heavily focused on arrears, affordability and welfare support, with safeguarding considerations. In the NHS and universities, it often means invoicing other public bodies, overseas patients, research funders or students, and involves a lot of inter-organisational reconciliation. In the private sector, it looks more like classic credit control - credit checks, credit limits, chasing business customers and protecting cash flow. Team size also changes the job: in a small organisation you may handle invoicing, chasing, allocation and reconciliation yourself, whereas in a large shared service centre you might do only one of those steps at high volume. Job titles are inconsistent too - the same work appears as Income Officer, Credit Controller, Accounts Receivable Assistant or Sales Ledger Clerk.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.