Overview
The Budget and Finance Assistant will be responsible for maintaining service payments, reviewing and preparing payments, serving as Treasury focal point, and assisting with financial backstopping of UNICRI Trust Fund.
Key Responsibilities
- Maintain all service payments for goods and services to third parties, individuals, vendors, UN service providers, implementing partners and reimbursement to staff.
- Review and prepare relevant payments in a timely and accurate manner, in accordance with UN Financial Regulations and Rules, and monitor open vendor items to ensure timely recovery of payments, and analyse relevant accounts receivables and payables.
- Serve as Treasury focal point: review incoming payment instructions with regard to banking details.
- Create bank details of all UNICRI Business Partners.
- Review payment statuses, identify exceptions or rejected payments along with the possible underlying causes, and take corrective actions.
- Notify payees on the status of payments.
- Identify donors’ cash deposits and assist project managers and donors with inquiries on deposit-related issues.
- Liaise with external UN Financial Services (UNOV, UNOG, UNHQ, etc.) to clear receivables and net payments.
- Ensure accurate submission of various treasury documents and forms and communicate banking-related issues to UNICRI’s clients.
- Review and analyse UNICRI accounts by extracting data from the accounting system, investigating financial records and preparing accounting vouchers and corrections to record a wide variety of financial transactions.
- Assist in the preparation of year-end reports and in various financial exercises during the year (review advances, receivables, clearing of open items, accruals); compile data extracted from the financial system and from other relevant source documents.
- Assist in the financial backstopping of the UNICRI Trust Fund, including monitoring voluntary contributions and expenditures on a monthly basis.
- Engage in financial data analyses, using various data sources, such as the UN’s own applicable Enterprise Resources Planning system (SAP system, UMOJA), and prepare information using advanced financial office software solutions.
- Highlight areas of concern for the attention of the supervisors.
- Extract project data and provide updated expenditure reports for each project by investigating discrepancies and analysing transactions using various Umoja tools.
- Verify accuracy of data input and initiate corrective actions regarding allotments and expenditures.
- Assist UNICRI senior management with the preparation of the yearly cost estimates and revisions, and assist in the preparation of budget performance reports.
- Process incoming Inter Office Vouchers and communicate with field offices and project teams to ensure and validate SES recordings in the relevant application; create grants based on signed funding agreements and sales orders for service delivery.
- Draft routine correspondence with respect to enquiries related to relevant financial and budgetary matters.
- Maintain and keep files up to date.
- Assist with the collection and analysis of data as well as preparation of data presentations and reports for information sharing, responding to queries, knowledge management, planning and decision making.
- Assist with visualisations and updating information material such as web pages or brochures.
- Perform other work-related duties as required.
Required Experience
- A minimum of five (5) years of progressively responsible work experience in finance, budget, accounting, administrative services or related area is required.
- The minimum number of years of relevant experience is reduced to three (3) for candidates with a first-level university degree or higher.
- Work experience in supporting the implementation and monitoring of projects and programs with focus on project finance (budgeting, expenditure tracking, variance analysis, reporting, cash control) is required.
- Work experience in processing financial transactions in financial module of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system (such as SAP/Umoja) is required.
- Experience working with the United Nations or similar international organizations is desirable.
- Work experience in data analytics, including preparation of budget performance reports is desirable.
- Work experience in processing treasury forms and with financial processes and system workflows is desirable.
Qualifications
High school diploma or equivalent is required.
