Job Title: Regional Finance Officer Responsible to: Geographic Finance Manager – Africa/Latin America and the Caribbean

ance Manager – Africa/Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

No. of direct reports: None
Responsibilities
Programme Funding:
Timely, quality and thorough financial management of all
programme funding including:
- Advice and support to Programme Offices (POs) in the
preparation of Project Total Cost templates and budgets for
donor proposals.
- Proactively advise Regional Directors on the impact of new
proposals in light of current resources/capacity/ financial
need and suggest effective solutions.
- Proactively advise on the preparation of donor financial
reports, ensuring full compliance with donor requirements.
- Act as a key link between the VSO Grant Accountables and
the Project Accountables, ensuring both parties have a full
understanding of each other’s priorities and requirements.
- Provide an expert quality review and opinion on budgets and
donor financial reports in respect to accuracy and impact on
regional finances.
Project Financial Management:
Create monitoring sheets, updating these as project circumstances
require, and provide ongoing support.
Advise PO’s on how to calculate and manage income balances
(income/expenditure), for donor and statutory reporting.
Provide a year-end review and opinion on project balances for
statutory accounts (income / expenditure accruals etc).
Proactively advise on requirements of, and help PO’s prepare for,
project audits.
Coordinate PO financial responses to project auditors.
Provide annual reforecast estimates of income and expenditure for
material projects to Head Office.
General Financial Management:
Provide proactive, expert financial management advice to Regional
Directors, Country Directors and other regional and programme
staff.
Fully support the annual budgeting process, providing specialist
advice to PO and regional staff.
Systems Development and Review:
Develop and introduce project-level financial systems within PO’s.
Work as part of the wider finance team in the development of
systems, by sharing regional best practice and information.
Upgrade financial policy and procedures. For example, developing
tools and procedural guidance, following appropriate internal
consultation, to enable VSO to achieve departmental objectives
Location:
Ke y Performance Indicators
Accurate Project Total Cost
templates are completed, accurate
donor reports and donor budgets
are completed by the contractual
deadline
Monthly monitoring routines that
investigate expenditure variances
and accurate quarterly
reforecasting of income and
expenditure expectations, accurate
year end donor and fund balances
and unqualified donor audit
reports.
Strong, robust financial controls
and management oversite in place
in all Programme Offices, Accurate
annual budgets submitted by
Programme Offices
VSO global robust financial
procedures and policies developed
that are understood and adhered
to by all Programme Offices
TBC
Competencies
Working together: Involving people in issues
that affect them; drawing out contributions from
other team members and facilitating dialogue so
that they understand the links between different
ideas and perspectives; actively listening and
summarising / reflecting back to others; using
open questions.
Communicating and influencing: Communicating
in a way which is clear, concise, well structured,
engaging and easily understood; ensuring people
can clearly understand messages; networking
with others in order to gain support for ideas.
Actively listening. Influencing others by relating
own plans to the needs and requirements of
others, and explaining the advantages and
disadvantages.
Managing Knowledge: Maintaining a network of
internal and external sources and being able to
find information quickly from them; sharing
sources to allow knowledge transfer; proactively
thinking who will benefit from information and
sharing it beyond the usual organisational
boundaries.
Striving for excellence: Setting specific
measurable targets and goals for improvement;
enabling self and others to experiment, learn and
improve. Routinely challenging the status quo,
developing multiple options to improve on
performance or processes. Giving and seeking
regular feedback.
Managing Resources: Spending VSO’s money in
a prudent and responsible manner. Being aware
of the need to prioritise and seeking guidance
from others to assist. Being aware of workloads
within the team and risk of pressure.
Leading for the future: Showing enthusiasm for
areas of work and communicating this to others
outside the team; being aware of VSO values and
how they can feed into own work.
Understanding the need to continuously adapt
for the future.
Skills Required
Finance Skills – At least part qualified
(CIMA, ACCA, ACA or CPA) or fully
qualified AAT or with a relevant MBA.
Strong accountancy and/or financial
management experience with
involvement in setting up and running
finance systems.
Grant Management – A strong
background in the financial
management of externally funded
grants.
Training and Coaching Skills –
Demonstration of the ability to analyse
staff development needs and to
contribute to the delivery of training
and coaching at an individual and group
level.
IT Skills - particularly Advanced Excel
skills (pivot tables, lookup functions,
Vision Excel reports etc), plus a
familiarity of working with computer
based financial systems so as to be able
to develop / maintain, and give
guidance on, electronic and manual
project financial monitoring / reporting
systems.
Data Analysis – Demonstration of ability
to assess, analyse, and report on
complex data.
Time and work management –
Demonstration of the ability to be able
to work autonomously, set own work
plan, meet tight deadlines and balance
competing priorities, with a willingness
to undertake frequent travel
Willingness to travel frequently, for up
to 12 weeks annually
and auditor recommendations.
Roll out, and provide training in, newly developed financial systems
across the region.
Capacity-Building:
Identify finance-related staff-development needs within the region
and provide on-the-job coaching to PO staff, build skills in project
and general financial management, compliance and reporting. Key
involvement in recruitment and input into appraisal of PO finance
staff.
For all Programme Offices to have a
fully functional and appropriate
finance department whose skills
meet the needs of the programmes
that they run.
Thinking Strategically: Linking different pieces
together to understand and analyse a situation;
considering the bigger picture and both internal
and external context. Thinking and contributing
outside own technical specialism or area of work.
Delivering Results: Being aware that progress
needs to be monitored and that tough decisions
need to be made. Responding to the plans of
others. Expressing frustration at obstacles to the
delivery of results.