Overview
The Finance Senior Associate is responsible for providing advisory, management support, and planning services to ensure compliant planning, administration, and management of business units' financial resources, and to support the oversight and control of project financial activities.
Tasks Summary
- Ensure full compliance with UNOPS rules, policies, IPSAS, and audit recommendations.
- Assist in maintaining an effective internal control framework.
- Contribute to drafting and updating Finance Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and propose cost-saving/efficiency measures.
- Promote a client-focused financial services culture across projects and support units.
- Set up accounts from project agreements.
- Compile data for budget estimates and revisions, and approve budgets (as delegated) in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
- Monitor allotments, commitments, and expenditures.
- Analyze variances and agree on corrective actions with project teams/ partners.
- Maintain budget controls to keep spending within approved limits and support project closures.
- Review and monitor cash positions for local accounts to ensure sufficient funds for operational disbursements.
- Operate and control bank accounts.
- Maintain cashbooks, and perform account analyses and reconciliations.
- Review and clear payment requests.
- Verify funding availability, coding and documentation.
- Process payroll/ travel/ vendor disbursements.
- Manage petty cash and operational advances.
- Liaise with banks on rates/ procedures.
- Prepare cash-flow forecasts and initiate transfers.
- Maintain ledgers and accounting records.
- Ensure timely, accurate ERP posting and month/ quarter close.
- Review vouchers/ supporting documents, GR/ IR and accruals.
- Resolve unposted items, match exceptions, and coding errors.
- Prepare bank reconciliations (segregated from payment operations).
- Respond to internal/ external audit queries.
- Prepare expenditure schedules, IFRs, donor statements, and management reports (delivery, aged items, receivables, value added tax, advances).
- Reconcile balance-sheet accounts.
- Investigate discrepancies and post general ledger (GL) adjustments.
- Coordinate with projects/ regions/ HQ to improve data quality, ensure audit readiness, and meet reporting deadlines.
- Support the organization, facilitation and delivery of training and learning sessions on finance topics.
- Participate in knowledge-sharing initiatives and Communities of Practice (CoPs), contributing insights and lessons learned.
- Conduct research on finance-related topics and contribute to the drafting of reports, summaries and briefing notes.
Experience Requirements
- Relevant experience is work in project financial management, budgeting, cash management and financial reporting, or related areas.
- Demonstrable proficiency in the use of collaboration and productivity tools (e.g. MS Office, G-Suite, etc) and web-based management systems.
- Experience of working in multicultural environments or UN system organizations in a developing country is desired.
- Experience in development or humanitarian contexts is desired.
- Experience with financial systems or ERP software is desired.
Qualification Requirements
- Required Secondary school (or equivalent) with 7 years of relevant experience OR Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration or other disciplines with 3 years of relevant experience is required.
- Desired Professional certification (e.g. CPA, ACCA, CA, CIMA) is desired.
