The Save the Children Fund, commonly known as Save the Children, was established in the United Kingdom in 1919 to improve the lives of children through better education, health care, and economic opportunities, as well as providing emergency aid in natural disasters, war, and other conflicts. After passing a century, which it celebrated in 2019, it is now a global movement made up of 29 national member organizations which work in 120 countries.

ROLE PURPOSE: 

The Finance Lead reports to the Deputy Chief of Party-Operations, and provides leadership for CDA’s budgeting, financial management, control and reporting processes. The Finance Lead ensures compliance with Save the Children’s accounting policy, donor requirements (USAID and LEGO) and generally accepted accounting principles through the development and supervision of CO financial policies and procedures. He/she is responsible for ensuring accurate, complete and reliable financial information is maintained in the CDA financial system, ensuring an effective and efficient control of CDA assets and cash flow to minimize receivables and currency revaluation losses etc. and providing on time accurate and meaningful reports to stakeholders.

S/he is the focal person for annual budget development, budget amendments and periodical forecasts. S/he plays a key role in supporting the Senior Management of CDA, contributing to the timely submission of quality financial reports to donors, by ensuring compliance of budget narratives to donor’s rules and regulations. S/he ensures that tools and templates are developed and used consistently for budget development sustainability and accurate cost recovery. The Finance Lead will ensure that CDA’s implementing partners produce high quality budgets and financial reports on a timely basis.

The role will work closely with the technical and operations team to ensure that annual budgeting, periodic forecasts and financial reporting align with the Country Office and donors’ Finance deliverables in a timely manner and provide the required level of detail and rigorous analysis. He/she will facilitate close coordination with Area/Field Offices to ensure the quality of budgetary information, expenditure tracking and financial information align with approved plans.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

Reports to: Deputy Chief of Party-Operations

Staff directly reporting to this post:  Finance Manager

EY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

Budgeting:

• Leads the development and periodic revisions of the USAID/LEGO CDA annual budget and annual/periodical projections of expenditures and funds in coordination with the Awards and CO finance team.
• Works with CDA team members, implementing partners’ finance officers, Area/Field Office finance coordinators on budget realignments and revisions when required.
• Ensures that all donor budgets are mapped in both SCI and donor formats and are accurately phased and linked to the Master budget.
• Ensures that all budgets are entered into the financial system- Agresso and phased correctly.
• Ensures consistency between budget and narrative and that the budget is tailored, reflecting relevance to and compliance with SCI and donor requirements.
• Monitors and provides technical support to implementing partners to ensure that they produce quality budgets and financial reports.
• Ensures that implementing partners have strong internal controls, accounting policies and procedures including robust reporting requirements.
• Ensures that effective systems are put in place, and regularly reviewed, to allow adequate financial management and control.
• Guides program staff in periodic budget reviews (at least once per month), prepares budget amendments as necessary and supports them to build systems and processes on financial skill to reduce risks.

Financial Reporting: 

• Ensures that implementing partners (IPs) submit good quality financial reports on time, monthly summary accounts including cash flow and other information as defined and share on a timely basis.
• Prepares monthly, quarterly and annual reports aligned with IPs as per the templates of donors and SCI.
• Leads the process of periodic financial expenditure analysis and reporting (weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually) and ensures a proper financial tracking mechanism is in place for both CDA core team and implementing partners.
• Facilitates and supports various audits and closure of audit findings.
• Ensures financial transactions are adequately supported, documented, reviewed and validated before being input into FMS/Agresso for data quality and coding accuracy of transactions.
• Reviews monthly financial reports to ensure the correctness of information before closing the accounts.
• Puts a system in place that limits exposure to transactions that are questionable and establishes a follow up plan to clarify the allowability of the charges with the budget holders of CDA
• Coordinates preparation of control reports, responds to findings and recommends solutions or action plans;
• Ensures proper accounting for partner advances and liquidations, periodic monitoring of partners on-site for spot checking adequate documentation of transactions, and reconciliation of partner related accounts.
• Reviews and checks recognition of monthly and year-end accruals and deferral adjustments per SCI policy.
• Ensures all relevant budgets versus actual (BVA) reports are provided to the Awards management team and senior management team on a monthly basis in order that budget monitoring meetings can be held and explanations for the variance documented and action plans are laid out.
• Ensures all donor financial reports are produced in a timely manner, using the correct formats. Work closely with Awards unit to streamline the donor reporting requirements.
• Ensures all financial plans, invoices, reports, and other financial documents and transactions are accurate, timely, and consistent with Save the Children and USAID guidelines and regulations.
• Performs financial review of purchase requests, purchase orders, and payment requests to ensure compliance with Save the Children’s policies and procedures and donors grants and contracts requirements.
• Performs analysis on the status of all sub-grants by activity and overall grant budget and propose ideas where necessary for request of revision, extension, or any appropriate action accordingly.
• Manages the USAID/LEGO financial records and documentation to be kept and archived containing VAT and other budget records including periodic financial adjustments.
• Oversees sub grant monitoring and compliance including organizational assessments, review of financial reports/advance requests, and financial tracking; develops sub grant monitoring plans; performs and documents compliance visits.
• Supervises the finance staff including performance evaluation and revising job descriptions as necessary.  Develops the capacity of the financial team of the implementing partners and LOEs of field offices.
• Prepares and revises finance guidelines in order that they adhere to SC and donor requirements.
• Encourages a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.
• Conducts risk analysis and trends, and recommends proper financial controls.
• Coordinates with the functional units (Finance, HR, Administration, Supply Chain and IT Solutions) in order to provide support on cost effectiveness, efficiency and compliance with the SCI policy and standards.
• Any other deliverables as may be requested from time to time by the line manager.

SKILLS AND BEHAVIOURS (our Values in Practice)

Accountability:

• Holds self accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modelling Save the Children values
• Holds the team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities – giving them the freedom to deliver in the best way they see fit, providing the necessary development to improve performance and applying appropriate consequences when results are not achieved

Ambition:

• Sets ambitious and challenging goals for themselves (and their team), takes responsibility for their own personal development and encourages others to do the same
• Widely shares their personal vision for Save the Children, engages and motivates others
• Future orientated, thinks strategically

Collaboration:

• Builds and maintains effective relationships, with their team, colleagues, members and external partners and supporters
• Values diversity, sees it as a source of competitive strength
• Approachable, good listener, easy to talk to

Creativity:

• Develops and encourages new and innovative solutions
• Willing to take disciplined risks

Integrity:

• Honest, encourages openness and transparency

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree from recognized University in Accounting and/or Finance.
• A minimum of 8 years of work experience, out of which 5 years’ experience directly related to financial management with USAID and LEGO funded programs.
• Demonstrable experience of managing large-scale operational budgets up to execution and will ideally offer a track record in overseeing a successful new system and processes implementation.
• Experience of statutory accounting management
• Experience in building the financial management capacity of local and international NGO staff.
• Evidence of working across a range of field offices with different range of portfolio and capacity to achieve significant change.
• Experience of strategic financial planning and development.

Skills & abilities: 

• Excellent leadership & influencing skills with finance professional credibility.
• Self-starter, capable of generating & delivering innovative solutions
• Effective management of staff at all levels in both Line and matrix structure
• Good proficiency with MS Office & range of software packages relating to financial management.
• Highly developed interpersonal and communication skills including influencing, negotiation and coaching.
• Ability and willingness to dramatically change work practices and hours, and work with incoming surge teams, in the event of emergencies.
• Fluency in English, both verbal and written.
• Commitment to Save the Children’s values