Associate-Grants Accountant at Aga Khan University (AKU)

Job Purpose/Summary

• The Grants Officer/Accountant will be responsible for monitoring the financial progress of research and programmatic grants by preparing grant budgets and developing grant financial reports according to the guidelines of the granting agency. The successful candidate will work closely with the Grants Coordinator and the research team to ensure financial compliance during grant implementation, as well as to support audits and financial accounting for grants.

Key Roles and Responsibilities

• Work closely with the Grants Coordinator and program staff, to ensure transactions are properly recorded and agree to the grant/contract agreement, while also ensuring sub-recipients/subcontracts costs are correctly captured.
• Prepare of internal grants reports to be shared with the Principal Investigators.
• Prepare donors reports as per their specification and on timely and accurate basis.
• Review budgets and reimbursement requests for appropriateness, and ensure sub-recipients follow established administrative and financial policies, procedures, and sound business practices.
• Exercise judgement to ensure that all decisions relating to research grant management are made in accordance with relevant rules, legislation, and policies and to check that the university’s best interests are served by the decisions.
• Build effective communication strategies with a variety of stakeholders and colleagues to ensure that information exchanges are timely, accurate and useful.
• Facilitate Internal and external grant financial audit.
• Review requisitions raised by the different departments to ensure spending is within the approved budgets.
• Ensure requisitions are done in a timely manner and charged correctly.
• Pass Journal Entries in Ledger related to grants.
• Review Trial Balance of Grants and prepare reports accordingly.
• Maintain efficient electronic and paper filing systems for financial records and submit required documents to relevant donors.

Relevant Experience and Qualifications

• Undergraduate degree in Business Administration /Accounting or Finance
• CPA-K/ ACCA qualifications
• 2-3 years of professional experience in finance and accounting.
• Prior experience in a granting agency will be an added advantage.