Senior Finance Officer at Act Change Transform (Act)

reference number (ACT/SFO/17/2022)

Key Responsibilities

Financial Management

• Prepare and get appropriate approvals for all invoices/reports to donors.
• Review and analysis of monthly programme management accounts and management reports as required by budget holders.
• Ensure that monthly analysis, interpretation and advice on variances against budgets are provided to the budget holders.
• In consultations with the Finance and Operations Manager, develop cash flow forecasts for the Organization for discussions with the SMT and the Board Committee on Finance and Audit.
• Tracking of overall Programme budget spending against budgets (pipeline monitoring), preparation of funds requests and follow with donors
• Ensuring financial practices that guarantee compliance with all donor and Act! policies and donor guidelines during program implementation and program close outs.
• Support the program teams with proposal development processes i.e. the budget components ensuring that overheads recoveries are in line with the policy on 100% cost recovery.
• Ensure Statutory, Tax and NGO Board compliances (tracking compliances on monthly, quarterly, semi-annually and annually). Includes maintaining the corresponding online portals as appropriate.
• Prepare of the year-end financial statements and statutory reports in readiness for annual audits and collaborating with the external auditors in ensuring smooth and seamless audits.
• Ensuring timely preparations, review and approval of bank reconciliation statements no later than the end of the 2nd week of the subsequent month.
• Other duties as assigned by the supervisor.

Monitoring and reporting (financial and programmatic)

• Tracking the periodic (monthly/Quarterly) grantee advances and liquidations.
• Monitor organizational expenditures and financial status and preparing monthly cash requirements for the organization.
• Ensuring finance staff involved in preparing payments do so in a manner that strictly meets set standards and finance guidelines (expenditures must be allowable, allocable and reasonable).
• Preparing high quality and accurate financial reports for review and approval by the finance and operations manager, which confirm to the annual budgets.
• Closely monitor obligations from donors and grant obligations.
• Monitoring any financial malpractices and to immediately establish mechanisms to plug any loopholes upon consultations with the Finance & Operations Manager.

Capacity building

• Participate in organizational capacity assessments and mentoring of selected Act! grantee partners.
• Regularly arrange in-house training activities for Programme staff on changes in regulations and donor standards.

Performance & Compliance Standards:

• Support the function in ensuring comprehensive, up to date and best practice policies and practices in finance.
• Keep well motivated support team.
• Support in ensuring full and timely compliance with all statutory, Act! and donor regulations.
• Timely completion and submission of all reports (SMT, Donors, Stakeholders, etc.).

Qualification, Experience and Skills:

Academic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Commerce, Accounting or related business field. A post graduate qualification is desirable.

Professional Qualifications

• Certified Public Accountant of Kenya (CPA-K) or ACCA qualification.

Experience

• At least seven years’ experience in Finance in a similar position and environment.
• At least five years’ experience of financial accounting systems management (ideally using ACCPAC).
• Grants management in an NGO setting.
• Audit experience and exposure to audit processes.
• Experience in preparing annual financial statements.
• Experience in supervising a team.

Essential Skills and Key Competencies

• Excellent written and oral communication skills including report writing, negotiation and representation.
• Effective people management skills including the ability to establish good professional relationships.
• Highly computer literate, numerically minded and able to solve complex problems
• Highly organized and able to prioritize workloads and meet tight deadlines
• Thoroughness and attention to details.
• Problem solving and analytical skills.
• Ability to multi-task and follow through tasks to their logical conclusion.

Complexity and difficulty of the work

• A demanding job that requires tolerance and sector knowledge