Programme Finance Manager – Liberia

Reporting to: West Africa Regional Finance Manager  
Hours: 37.5 Hours per week 
Principal Location: Monrovia, Liberia, with frequent travel to regional office / project sites. 
Time Frame: 18 months renewable contract envisaged  
Salary: $40-50k per annum, dependant on experience 

Background:  

Street Child believes every child deserves to go to school and learn. Our projects focus on education, child protection, and livelihood support to address the social, economic, and structural issues underpinning today’s education crisis. We partner with local organizations and communities to deliver our locally rooted programs. We use evidence to drive learning and the refinement and scale-up of programs to create maximum impact for most children at the lowest cost. We pride ourselves on being willing to go to the world’s most challenging places where others won’t, including remote, hard-to-reach areas and fragile, disaster-affected states across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Since 2008 we have helped over 1 million children go to school and learn and supported over 50,000 families to set up businesses to afford the cost of educating their children. 

Part 1: Role Purpose: 

The purpose of this role is to lead improvements in the financial management of Street Child’s partner, Street Child of Liberia (SCoL), a national education and child protection organisation with nationwide presence and annual budget of up to $1m. The role holder will also manage Street Child’s financial reporting and compliance requirements in delivering programmes in Liberia. 

The role will report to Street Child’s West Africa Regional Finance Manager, with oversight of Street Child of Liberia’s finance team, and a close working relationship with SCoL SMT, Street Child’s Freetown based Head of Sierra Leone / Liberia Programmes and Monrovia based Programmes Officer.  

The role provides financial oversight of programmes in Liberia, facilitating accurate and timely donor reporting, strong budget management and excellent record keeping. Key aspects of this role include: improve financial management and reporting systems; ensure a strong control environment and maintain strong record keeping; empower programmes and leadership teams to have strong financial management and grant management capabilities. The role also serves as a link between Street Child of Liberia and Street Child UK, delivering monthly requisitions, annual budget information and other information as required, with scope to extend support across Street Child’s regional programmes portfolio as required. 

Part 2: Key Responsibilities: 

1) Ensure robust financial management and reporting systems to facilitate accurate donor reporting, strong budget management and transparency for budgeting (40%) 

• Ensure that all staff are using the QuickBooks finance system in place at Street Child of Liberia to provide accurate and timely recording of transactions – providing training, review, support and direct input as needed. 

• Ensure that all month end processes are carried out in a timely manner including month end closure processes, bank reconciliations, balance sheet reconciliations, and generating reports 

• Providing reliable donor reports, Budget vs Actual reports to the Director and Programmes staff to facilitate good planning and anticipation of any changes needed to programmes delivery. 

• Ensure that donor expenditure is recorded accurately and finance reports are of high quality with full supporting transaction listings reconciled to the finance system and delivered to deadlines in accordance donor requirements. Report on all costs incurred both at Street Child of Liberia and Street Child HQ. 

• Preparation of all donor reports, working with Partner Finance team and programmes staff as needed to ensure that they are delivered on time and with appropriate sign off. 

• Support donor due diligence and donor audits by provision of information required. 

• Provide input as necessary for all donor budget proposals, ensuring that costs requested are complete and reasonable seek approval for all donor proposal budgets before they are submitted to donors 

• Facilitate the year end audit, over-setting the end to end of the annual audit process. 

2) Strengthening the control environment and record keeping (30%) 

• Review and assess the effectiveness of internal controls and recommend changes and improvements as required , and review any improvements in internal controls recommended by auditors or donors. 

• Work with colleagues to devise a delivery plan to ensure that improvements are met, and support the delivery of that plan. 

• Strong financial procedures are in place to accompany all payments and improvements are made to the payments system including in particular justifying the use of cash and advances. 

• Ensure appropriate bank & cash management procedures are in place and operating effectively, including bank reconciliations for all accounts, cash counts and cash transfers to field sites. 

• Ensure robust procurement processes are in place and being followed, working with the procurement team to make any changes needed and ensure that all staff are clear on the required procurement process. 

• Developing Financial management tools, including policies and procedures as required. 

• Ensure that monthly requisitions (the process for requesting monthly transfers from HQ) are robust, evidence based and submitted on time each month. 

• upcoming up with an annual budget, approved in accordance with SC budget timetable, working with the Senior West Africa Finance Manager to develop consistent templates to use in each template. 

• Regularly advise and provide support on other issues as the need arises. 

3) Participate in finance related meetings and initiatives for all SCoL programmes, providing budget and financial guidance, including provision of training to colleagues (10%) 

• To ensure the smooth-running of the programme with respect to its financial obligations. 

• Compliance with the organisational procedures; quality of budget monitoring; quality of the budgets drawn up; quality of financial reports for donors; anticipation of financial problems. 

• Provide BVAs every month by the 10th of M+1 of all contracts. 

• Plan and lead the BVA analysis meetings every month before the 15th. 

• Ensure coherency between the programme budget and the donors’ budgets. 

• Procedures so as to ensure a realistic budget, accurate expenditure codification and robust budgetary steering. 

• Draw up and monitor cost allocation tables for office and staff costs. 

• Conduct the monthly, bi-annual and annual accounts closing operations · Raise programme teams’ awareness of contractual budget and financial obligations. 

• Analyse donor guidelines and inform the teams about these procedures and their application. 

• Train programme teams in internal budget and financial management. 

• Check the budgetary monitoring of the funding schedule. 

• Substantiate the financial accounts with regard to local legislation.  

• Monitor and organise internal and external audits, assume the role of the auditor’s primary contact in liaison with head office. 

4) Working with the finance team (10%) 

• Train the finance team. 

• Set up communication and coordination mechanisms for the team. 

• Manage contractual monitoring (leave, end of trial periods, etc.) of finance team members; if necessary, co-validate disciplinary procedures with Operations Manager. 

• Oversee finance team’s career development: define training needs and provide guidance on professional development. 

5) A liaison and link with Street Child UK Finance team to enable management of operations in Liberia (10%) 

• Develop the annual budget for Liberia, which includes costs budget, programmes costs, cash flow forecasting. 

• Enter Street Child of Liberia costs on the HQ finance system (Aqilla) and ensure that all monthly transfers to Street Child of Liberia are fully accounted for and reconciled. 

Part 3: Person Specification  

Attributes / Education / Qualifications 

Essential: 

• Educated to degree level or higher 

• Recognised Accountancy Qualifications 

Desirable: 

• Degree in International Business Administration, finance or related field; or attendance at specific relevant training courses 

Attributes / Experience & Knowledge 

Essential: 

• 5 years post qualification experience  

• Experience of implementing internal controls and finance procedures 

• Experience of managing multi donor grants and good knowledge of donor compliance rules and requirements – in particular working with DFID, UN, EU, USAID 

Desirable: 

• Knowledge of development issues and concepts 

Attributes / Skills / Abilities  

Essential: 

• Extensive knowledge of finance & logistics policy within non-governmental organizations 

• Knowledge of computer applications and software finance packages –in particular Quickbooks and Aqilla or other “mid-tier” finance system 

Desirable: 

• System design and implementation of finance software packages 

Attributes / Other 

Essential: 

• Strong interpersonal, management and team work skills  

• Ability to influence change in teams not directly managed 

• A self-starter, capable of working independently and flexibly to a high level  

• Fluent English –written and spoken 

Desirable: 

• Good communication and staff training / capacity building skills