Finance Associate

The hunger crisis in Afghanistan is unfolding at a rapid pace, with 15 million of population now facing acute food insecurity. Work opportunities are shrinking, with most households now reporting just one day of work per week. This comes on top of the worst drought in years, which is especially concerning for the 85 percent of the population who rely on agriculture for livelihoods.

Preventing and mitigating a drastic increase in hunger and malnutrition is the aim of WFP in Afghanistan which can only be achieved through the scaled up and sustained complementary food security and nutrition interventions, combined with a scale-up of resilience interventions to safeguard gains. WFP has embarked on a significant month-on-month scale-up of its crisis response and resilience programmes across the country, ensuring that the programme is delivered at the right scale and time, targeted to the right areas. WFP is also actively following up on evolving trends to pre-empt hotspots, while guaranteeing quality and maximum impact of the programme through the monitoring of these hotspots to be able to support continued donor advocacy.

JOB PURPOSE

• To join other units to carry out spot-checks to assess the soundness of the corporating partner’s internal controls, financial records, procurement management, and asset management. Also, coordinate and take the lead in the exercises and produce comprehensive reports summarizing the work performed and the ensuing findings and recommendations for improving controls, financial processes, or expenditure management.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)

• Under the overall guidance and direct supervision of the Head of Area Office with technical support from the Head of Finance, the Country Office will be responsible for:

Spot checks and other regular finance tasks: 

Obtain the FLA and FLA budget together with Actual Statement of Expenditure reports for the quarters or months under review. 

• Reconcile the expenditure totals, per activity if applicable, on the Statement of Expenditure reports to the CP’s accounting records (i.e., general ledger or list of individual transactions).
• Select a sample of deposits and verify the bank statement to determine whether they were deposited into the CP’s bank account.
• Inquire with the management about the reasonability of the expenditures.
• Verify that the Statement of Expenditure reports were signed by authorised officials.
• Check the physical supporting documents and the validity of the supporting documents presented for payments
• Visit CP offices/sites based on need for further verification and authentication of the resource utilization as per the FLA

Review the expenditures recorded in journals and/or in the Statement of Expenditure reports issued during the period under review. The review should include, but not be limited to, the following steps: 

• Review the adequacy of supporting documentation (e.g. invoices, purchase orders, receipt of goods, bank transfers/checks, bank statements) to ensure that it is consistent with the description of the transaction (per the accounting records) and that it is consistent with the activity described in the FLA.
• Verify if there is adequate segregation of duties in processing the transactions.
• Verify if payment vouchers are authorised and checks are signed by the designated officials.
• Review mathematical computation of individual payments and total payments against the expenditures.
• Check the detailed expenditure against the approved budget as per FLA. If there is any deviation from the budget, assess whether they were authorised.
• Check the dates of the supporting documents to ensure that the expenditure was incurred during the period under review, as per the approved FLA Budget.
• Verify that supporting documents are stamped ‘PAID’, indicating which agency funded the transaction.

Update the status of recommendations from the previous audits and spot check reports:

• Review internal controls, especially when these might have changed compared to the previous audits.
• Discuss the review findings with the Implementing Partner’s designated official.

Human resources: review the new hiring and contract extension since the previous audit:

• Obtain the list of staff of the Project at the identified location.
• For those new staff, i.e. hired during the review period, obtain the contract.
• For those existing staff, select a sample of two employees and review the contract extension.
• Do random interview of the project staff – ensuring timely and adequent payment to staff as per the FLA are made

Cash management: review procedures for safeguarding cash by the project 

• Inquire who is responsible for safeguarding cash and for recording transactions.
• Verify whether the custody and record keeping of cash is segregated.
• Procurement: review the procurement cases above $1000
• Obtain a list of procurements during the period covered.
• Review whether this procurement, if any, complies with the procurement policy.
• Examine supporting documents.

Capacity assessment of the CPs,

• Draw the capacity building plan in consultation with all relevant units and provide financial Management training to CPs
• Other Treasury, Disbursement  and Financial Management Duties

STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Education:

• Completion of secondary school education.
• Higher education in lieu of work experience
• Relevant, completed university degrees may be considered in lieu of experience with the following conversions:
• Completed Master’s degree: Equal to 1 year of work experience.
• Completed Bachelor’s degree: Equal to 2 years of work experience.
• For female applicants, 1 or 2 years’ experience may be granted for partly completed studies before 2022.

Minimum Work Experience:

• At least 6 years of progressive relevant work experience out of which at least 4 years in finance.

Language:

• Fluency (level C) in the English language. Fluency in both oral and written communication in Dari and Pashto.

Source: https://career5.successfactors.eu//career?career_ns=job_listing&company=C0000168410P&navBarLevel=JOB_SEARCH&rcm_site_locale=en_GB&career_job_req_id=833382