Finance Assistant at Pan African Climate Justice Alliance

This massive transition requires institutions with desirable capacity and requisite human resource.
We at PACJA believe that building a critical team of Africans drawn from communities at the frontline of climate change impacts – smallholder farmers, pastoralists, marginalized groups, women, youth, etc – and giving them a voice constitute a major path towards resilience-building and climate justice. It begins with our practice and processes we are involved in.

We practice what we preach. Our membership and employees uphold the highest level of commitment to the values of a just society espoused by our vision, mission, and objectives. And in broadening our outreach, we seek to increase our workforce by recruiting self-motivated individuals to fill the following vacancies.

Position Summary: To assist the organization in achieving optimal performance in terms of program quality strengthening operations and finance department by emerging tools, systems and staff capacity to adhere to PACJA financial and operations policies and procedures and Donor compliance.

Job Responsibilities

Cash & Bank payments processing

• Monthly Reconciliation of all bank accounts and preparation of payment listings ready for review and upload into the sun system.
• Manage the petty cash by ensuring that all payments are done according to the provided procedures and set limits. .
• Preparation of petty cash spreadsheets to upload stage ready for review by Finance and
• Administration Manager or her designate at the end of the month.
• Ensuring that authorizations on the payments requests are in line with the approved limits per the organizational policies.
• Maintaining the receipt book and ensuring that authorized receipts are issued upon receipt of monies.
• Ensure that statutory deductions such as PAYE and other payroll deductions are remitted before the 9th of the following month.
• Oversee the maintenance of an accurate and updated cash flow report. Provide weekly updates on this to the relevant supervisor.
• Work closely with the FAM or her designate to ensure that there is sufficient bank reserves at all times for all bank accounts.
• Maintain an organized and well-documented bank correspondences file ensuring it’s continuously updated.
• Perform regular supplier reconciliation to be done on a monthly basis.

Reporting

• Loading of month-end journals into the accounting system by the stipulated timeline to ensure timely submission of the month-end file by the 6th of every month.
• Prepare Monthly Balance Sheet schedules as assigned. Make sure all items in the balance sheet account are current and can be supported. Follow-up on any adjustments to be made.

Document preparation & control

• Preparation of all payment requests, while ensuring completeness and accuracy of support documentation attachment on payment requests.
• Ensure that liquidation and accounting of staff travel advances are done correctly. This will include verifying per diems rates, attached documentations against the provided PACJA policy guidelines.
• Oversee the payment turn-around period to avoid delays in handling requests submitted to finance.

Filing

• Maintain an organized and well-documented (all files must be labeled properly and visibly) and sequential filing system for all cash disbursement vouchers
• Before filing, ensure that all documents have been stamped ‘PAID’ including cash payment reference details.

Other

• Preparation of corrective journals and assisting in loading of journals as and when required
• Any other duties as may be assigned by the supervisor.

Qualifications

• A bachelor’s degree in Finance/Business Administration with minimum CPA II qualification
• Work experience in a similar position.
• At least three years of finance and accounting experience in a similar position;
• Knowledge of Microsoft Office software. SAGE pastels System accounting is an added advantage;
• Ability to work independently in a rapidly changing professional environment with a view towards establishing administrative procedures and protocol that will ensure optimal functioning of the operation;
• Excellent interpersonal, organizational, and time management skills;
• Ability to work in and as a team.
• Punctuality, intellectual curiosity, willingness to take initiative, multi-tasking, and willingness to work under pressure to meet deadlines.
• Fluency in written and spoken English