Project Accountant & Administrator (Coffee & CSOs) UK NGO Jobs – Farm Africa
Job Title: Project Accountant & Administrator (Coffee & CSOs)
Organization: Farm Africa
Duty Station: Kanungu, Uganda
Reports to: Project Coordinator – Coffee & CSOs
About US:
Farm Africa is an international non-governmental organization working to end hunger and bring prosperity to rural Africa. We work to increase the incomes and improve food security of smallholder farmers, pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, and forest dwellers in East Africa. A core part of our strategy is to ensure that our interventions are both economically sustainable and scalable. The systematic integration of market linkages in implementing programmes is crucial to our ability to scale our interventions cost-effectively. Farm Africa has the ambition to be the leading European NGO specialising in Agriculture, Natural Resource Management and Market Engagement.
About Projects:
Farm Africa is currently implementing a three-year project supporting coffee farmers in Western Uganda’s Kanungu district. The project comprises of two distinct parts.
The first part, funded by the European Union, is already under way and focuses on building the capacity of Civil Society Organisations (CSO) to create employment and self-employment opportunities within the coffee value chain for 4,800 young women and men Kanungu district. A broad range of CSOs are engaged ranging from coffee growers cooperatives to national stakeholder platforms representing both young farmers and coffee farmers. The second part, funded by UK aid, will start later in 2019 and will focus on ensuring that women are able to fully benefit from support given to coffee farmers in Kanungu, as well as financially benefit from their contributions to the coffee value chain.
Job Summary: The Project Accountant & Administrator (Coffee & CSOs) will ensure a high standard of financial and administrative management for Farm Africa’s Coffee Project in Kanungu district.
Key Duties and Responsibilities:
Accounting and Finance – managing income and expenditure processing, and maintaining accurate financial records – in particular:
- Ensuring prompt and accurate accounting for all project income and expenditure using SUN templates
- Ensuring that proper accounting records are maintained across all field sites including debtor and creditor listings and staff working advance records, carrying out monthly reconciliations
- Coding and gaining authorisation for all expenditure according to Farm Africa procedures
- Ensuring timely payment of all invoices and expenditures
- Ensuring enough cash available for smooth implementation of the project by preparing and submitting monthly cash forecast to the Uganda Country Office.
- Ensuring the field office has sufficient cash available to meet project running costs
- Undertaking regular banking duties including checking of balances, prompt cash and cheque deposits, collecting bank statements periodically as may be required. And acting as a bank agent for Farm Africa
- Performing monthly general ledger accounting reconciliations and analysis ensuring accuracy of ledger and month end reporting in accordance with GAAP, organisational policy and donor regulations. This includes reconciliations of bank, cash, SWA, Prepayments and creditors/Inter-project accounts
Financial reporting including:
- Supplying accurate and complete monthly project accounts to the Country Office team.
- Producing financial reports in line with donor reporting requirements
- Reviewing and feeding back on monthly Budget Monitoring Reports
- Monthly submission of detailed transaction reports to Kampala as required for monthly donor reporting
- Collating and submitting all accountabilities on a quarterly basis to the donor for physical verification
- Working with the Finance & Administration Manager (based in Kampala) to ensure that all donor reporting requirements are met
Budgeting and budget management tasks including:
- Assisting the Project Coordinator with preparing and checking of budgets during the annual planning process
- Assisting the Project Coordinator with preparing and checking budget revisions during the year as required
- Weekly upload of all FA transactions to QuickBooks/SUN
- Maintaining accurate and up to date expenditure records that allow real time monitoring of expenditure against budget for each and every budget line
Ensuring compliance with standards contained in the Farm Africa Finance Procedures Manual, and in particular:
- Advising the Project Coordinator and/or Country Director on relevant budgetary control measures to address any identified weakness in policy and/or practice.
- Feeding back any pertinent financial management issues to the Finance Administrative Manager and/or Country Director
- Ensuring annual project audit is carried out on time and conducted in an organized manner
- Ensuring all procurement is carried out in adherence to Farm Africa’s procurement policies.
- Ensuring time sheets are completed where necessary (any staff member who is not 100% dedicated to the project)
- Ensuring driver and vehicle log books in place, that fuel records for all vehicles are analyzed on a monthly basis, and that cars and motorcycles are comprehensively insured are being maintained and serviced according to supplier guidelines.
Line management
- Assisting the Driver & Assistant with managing his/her workload in accordance with the requirements of other project team members
- Holding supervision sessions with the Driver & Assistant at least once per quarter (to discuss progress against work plans and targets and resolve any outstanding issues)
- Ensuring the Drive & Assistant has objectives in place and that his/her performance is regularly appraised in line with Farm Africa’s systems and policies.
Playing a key role in delivering the wider objectives of Farm Africa’s Coffee & CSOs project including:
- Facilities management for Kanungu Office
- Assisting with facilitating monitoring and communications visits from Donors and/or the wider Farm Africa team
- Maintaining proper personnel files for the Coffee & CSOs project team such as leave records, annual appraisals and general personal records
- Undertaking any other duties as reasonably requested by the project coordinator
- Supporting the Business Development Officer to build the financial management capacity of producer organisations, SMEs and other CSOs engaged in the project.
Play an active role as a member of the Farm Africa Country team:
- Contribute to the development and implementation of Farm Africa’s strategy
- Identify and explore opportunities to grow and expand the country project pipeline, both in relation to the current project or related to new project opportunities
- Work with the PM, CD and the UK Programme Funding Unit to prepare funding proposals where requested, ensuring that any lessons learned during implementation are documented and built into future project design
- Participate in country-level or Pan-Farm Africa programme meetings with other project coordinators, as reasonably requested
- 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 ideal candidate for the Farm Africa Project Accountant & Administrator (Coffee & CSOs) job should possess a Degree in Accounting or Finance
- At least three years’ experience working in an accounting position
- Demonstrable experience of producing project budgets and monitoring activities against them
- Experience of producing content for donor reports
- Experience of managing procurement processes
- Experience of managing other staff
- Experience of facilities and/or fleet management
- Experience of ensuring compliance with financial and operational policies and procedures in field office.
- Excellent communication skills, including the ability to communicate with people from a broad range of backgrounds
- Good working knowledge of Microsoft Office programmes, in particular Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- Able to work under own initiative
- Flexible and ‘can do’ attitude
- Honest and Integrity
- Team Player
Desirable:
- CPA (III) Qualification
- Working for an INGO
- Experience of using SUN accounting systems
- Excellent knowledge and understanding of URA requirements and processes
- Demonstrable experience of administering payroll using an online system
- Experience of maintaining HR and personnel records
- Experience of establishing and embedding financial processes and procedures
- Experience of managing project-level audits
How to Apply:
Please submit your CV, salary history and supporting statement 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 1st April 2019 at either Kanungu or Kampala office. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Deadline: 24th March 2019
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