Finance & Administration Manager UK NGO Jobs – Farm Africa
Job Title: Finance & Administration Manager
Organization: Farm Africa
Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda
Reports to: Country Director
About US:
Farm Africa, founded in 1985, is an international non-governmental organization working in Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. We drive agricultural and environmental change to improve lives. Our strategy has three pillars: agricultural expertise, management and preservation of ecosystems, and the power of business to drive prosperity. We believe Africa has the power to feed itself and are helping make this happen by establishing and spreading the best farming and forestry techniques so that poor farmers and herders have more food to feed their families and to sell. We help smallholders manage their natural resources sustainably so that they can withstand climate change challenges and shocks and ensure their families have enough food in the future as well as now. Farm Africa works in partnership with communities, government, local and international organizations, and the private sector to innovate, learn and share best practices for maximum impact of our projects.
Job Summary: The Finance & Administration Manager (FAM) is a key member of the Farm Africa Uganda Senior Management Team – with overall responsibility for finance, compliance, human resources and logistics in Uganda. Based in the Country Office, the FAM line manages the Senior Operations & Administration Officer (SOAO), and also provides technical support and leadership to the finance staff based in the field offices.
Job Purpose: The Finance & Administration Manager will ensure a high standard of financial management and organisational administration for Farm Africa’s country office and projects in Uganda.
Key Duties and Responsibilities: The key responsibilities of the Finance & Administration Manager will be:
Financial Management & Reporting including:
- Ensuring that all income and expenditure for Farm Africa Uganda is promptly and accurately recorded on SUN system and monthly books of accounts for Uganda country programme are closed, with all reconciliations accurately performed in accordance with internal reporting timetables and International Financial Reporting standard, International Accounting standard, GAAP, organisational policy and donor regulations
- Providing high-quality, accurate and timely reports and other financial information as requested to the UK-based finance team, Country Director and Project Coordinators both for internal and external (donor) use
- Responsibility for cash flow management for Farm Africa Uganda, including preparation of regular cash flow projections, reviewing cash requests from projects, preparation and submission of country-wide cash flow requests, management of cash transfers to project offices and submission of funding requests to donors (where applicable)
- Monitoring fund balances of all projects on a monthly basis to inform project funding requests, partner expenditure reports outstanding and project close procedures
- Closing out Farm Africa Uganda projects in line with both Farm Africa Uganda Project closeout policy and donor requirements
- Ensuring that invoices and other requests for payment are thoroughly reviewed, coded and approved in line with organisational procedures and donor requirements, and paid in a timely manner
- Ensuring monthly time sheets are completed where necessary and submitted on time
- Undertaking regular banking duties including making online payment, checking of balances, prompt cash and cheque deposits, collating bank statements, adding new signatories etc
- Preparing statutory financial statements and managing the annual external audit for Farm Africa Uganda, as well as providing information and support as part of the Farm Africa organisational audit To oversee and ensure delivery of project-level audits in line with internal and donor
- Managing the payroll for Farm Africa Uganda
Budgeting and budget management including:
- Producing the annual budget for Uganda country office, and monitoring expenditure against it.
- Developing and providing the necessary annual budgeting tools to Project teams and ensure that the project’s annual budgets are in line with available budget caps and donor spending requirements.
- Working with the Programme Manager (PM) to support the Project Coordinators and Project Accountants to develop annual budgets and revise budgets as part of the regular forecasting process
- Ensuring that accurate and timely budgets and forecasts are fully coded for upload to SUN and submitted to the London office in line with the budget timetable.
- Ensuring alignment of budgets uploaded to SUN system to donor approved budgets
- Monitor of project spend against donor approved budgets, and ensuring are variances are within approved limits
- Updating and running the monthly Budget Monitoring Reports (BMRs) for all projects and country office, and ensuring BMRs are shared with project teams on a timely basis, the reasons for variances are understood and documented, and all queries from project teams are promptly acted upon.
- Regularly updating the database of standard costings for Uganda costings
- Supporting the CD, PM, and programmed design team develop accurate and detailed budgets for funding proposals using FA standard templates, and translating them in to donor templates as required
- Working with the CD, PM and programme design team to ensure that budgets meet cost recovery requirements
- Translating budgets for newly awarded projects in to Farm Africa Budget format and fully code for upload to SUN
Ensuring organisational and team compliance with policies and procedures including:
- Regularly reviewing and updating policies and processes – ensuring they are fit for purpose and aligned with Farm Africa, GoU and donor requirements.
- Ensuring that all Farm Africa Uganda staff are aware of and operating in line with Farm Africa Uganda’s financial and administrative policies and processes
- Ensuring that new staff have an appropriate and through induction on Farm Africa’s policies and procedures – including training on the Code of Conduct and signing up to it
- Making quarterly visits to field offices to provide ongoing training on policies and procedures, and review records to check compliance against them
- Ensure that recommendations arising from internal and external audits are acted upon, and issued are addressed at both UCO and field offices
- Advise the CD and London Finance team, on relevant budgetary control measures to address any identified weakness in policy and/or practice
- Ensure all procurement (both at the country office and field offices) is carried out in adherence to Farm Africa Uganda’s procurement policies and is aligned with relevant donor requirements
- To ensure compliance with statutory, URSB, FIA and NGO Board operational and reporting requirements
- Ensuring partners, service providers, suppliers and other third parties are issued with accurate, appropriate and legally sound contracts in a timely manner, and each contract analysed and assessed to ensure that Farm Africa is not exposed to financial and legal risks
Grant and partner management including:
- Providing all implementing partners with appropriate reporting templates – and ensuring that they are confident in using them
- Participating in the due diligence process for new partners in line with Farm Africa standard processes and ensure that all areas of concerns and potential risks associated with different partners are flagged to the Country Director
- Ensuring implementing partners are held accountable to contractual obligations when submitting reports and accountabilities – both in terms of timings and documents submitted
- Closely scrutinizing all submitted accountabilities are closely, raising and resolving issues and discrepancies promptly with IPs
- Ensuring that all expenditure by IPs that is not in line with donor requirements is disallowed
- Ensuring clear disbursement timetables are in place for each IP, and adhered to in terms of timings and required documents
- Promptly reporting queries and concerns re partner spend to the CD as appropriate
- Ensuring that all relevant staff (FA and partners) fully understand and are compliant with donor reporting/spending requirements
- Timely preparation of periodical donor financial reports as per the donor calendars, including management of uploads of data to external donor-managed grants management systems where required
Human resources, administration, logistics and facilities management including:
- Prepare and process monthly payroll for all staff in Uganda – ensuring statutory deductions are made and returns filed
- Ensuring that the SOAO maintains full and accurate personnel files for FA Uganda staff, and ensure that project office teams maintain up to date records at a field level
- Ensuring that all recruitment carried out by Farm Africa Uganda is carried out transparently and in accordance with internal policies and procedures. And in particular ensuring that roles are appropriately advertised, references are taken in line with Farm Africa polices and contracts are issued and signed.
- Ensure that all staff probationary reviews, mid-year appraisals and annual appraisals are conducted in the timely manner
- Ensuring appropriate insurance policies are in place for all Farm Africa staff and assets Overseeing facilities and office management for UCO and project offices
- Overseeing logistical arrangements for UCO staff travel, and all overseas visitors
NB: These essential functions are not to be interpreted as a complete statement of all duties performed. Employees will be required to perform other job related duties as required. All work responsibilities are subject to having performance goals and/or targets established.
Qualifications, Skills and Experience:
- The applicant for the Farm Africa Finance & Administration Manager job must hold a Postgraduate qualification in Accounting or Finance or other relevant field
- Excellent working knowledge of a major international accounting system
- Excellent knowledge of Uganda Tax Laws and their application in a INGO context
- Five years’ experience as a senior financial manager in a well-known and reputable organisation with sub-offices.
- Experience of producing complex budgets and monitoring expenditure against them
- Experience co-ordinating financial reporting across multiple offices or projects
- Experience of ensuring compliance with financial and administrative procedures across multiple office sites in rural locations
- Experience of producing financial statements and managing external audits
- Procurement management of both mid and high-value items using a variety of different tender processes
- Experience of managing financial reporting for international donors
- Experience of managing the payroll and statutory deductions
- Experience of leading and building the capacity of others
- Experience of carrying out internal audits of field office operations
- Highly financially literate with excellent Excel skills
- Excellent communication skills, and in particular the ability to guide and capacity build others
- Excellent organisational and time management skills – with the ability to multi-task and simultaneously meet multiple deadlines
- Excellent time management of self and team; able to multitask and works well under pressure; negotiates and meets deadlines
- Excellent attention to detail, with the ability to spot mistakes and discrepancies in financial records
- Ability to identify risks and operational weaknesses and mitigating actions to be taken
- Willingness and ability to travel to field offices across Uganda on a regular basis
Desirable:
- CPA III or equivalent international accounting qualification
- Detailed understanding of Uganda Employment Act 2006 and its application in the workplace
- Excellent working knowledge of SUN accounting system (SUN 6 would be an advantage)
- Experience of working in a large INGO
- Experience of developing budgeting tools and templates for complex development projects and building the capacity of finance and non-finance staff to utilise them
- Experience in overseeing fleet, asset and facilities management
- Experience of systems and procedures review and improvement
- Experience of managing donor audits
- Experience of managing financial reporting for UKAID, EU and aBi Development funded projects
- Experience of overseeing or managing human resources and performance management
How to Apply:
Please submit your CV, salary history and a two page supporting statement demonstrating how your skills and experience meet the requirements outlined in the person specification to ugandarecruitment@farmafrica.org.
NB: Please DO NOT send additional documents such as certificates and references with your application. Shortlisted candidates ONLY will be required to provide these documents during the interview process. Interviews are expected to take place w/c 30th March 2020 at Farm Africa’s country office in Kampala or Lira field office. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
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Deadline: 22nd March 2020 by 5:00pm EAT