Finance Officer – Ukraine

General / Background

This is a key role within the finance team that provides financial administrative tasks, oversight, and analysis for the Ukraine office, as well as the Ukraine response regional grant portfolio, while ensuring compliance with donor requirements. The Finance Officer (FO) also contributes to proposal development for War Child’s grants portfolio by linking programmatic planning with cost-effective and accurate budgeting following the program’s log frame for interventions, activities, and program management.

Position in the organisation

The Finance Officer is a member of the Ukraine Response Team and the Finance Department. The Finance Officer reports directly to the Country Representative and functionally to the Global Head of Finance. The Finance Officer does not manage others.

Key Result Areas

1. Grant finance management support

• Review grant budgets and financial reports against approved budgets to provide critical feedback to the implementing partners, programme unit, and supervisor, if necessary;
• Monitor budgets in grant proposals and verify their consistency with prevailing market rate; assist in discussion/negotiation of costs/fees as required;
• Verify reporting requirements are adhered to and ensure close liaison with the project coordinators, Country Representative and the Head of Finance on any delays or other difficulties;
• Review payment requests and ensure payments are processed based upon the grant agreement, agreed payment schedules, and fund availability;
• Support the project coordinators and Country Representative of portfolios assigned in budgeting and forecasting of grant related expenditures; ensure variances are communicated at an early stage;
• Resolve operational and process issues related to grant management, and refer complex issues to the head of finance and manager 2PG with recommendations for courses of action;
• Coordinate the process of operational and financial closure of grants and projects;
• Contribute to the coordination and follow up on the audits of implementing partners;
• Highlight risks and delays to the supervisor and team as appropriate; and
• Support the project team to update and maintain grants and contracts tools that will ensure timely review and deadlines of reports submission assigned by project and internal requirements.

Result: Integrated and proactive contract, financial and compliance support on a portfolio of Ukraine regional response grants and projects.

2. Ukraine office finance

• Maintain transactions in the finance system (Unit 4);
• Prepare payments for approved expenses;
• Ensure compliance of the financial administration with local laws and regulations, including taxation;
• Cash management, including disbursements and reconciliations;
• Banking management including account maintenance, signatories and reconciliations.

3. Budgeting, accounting, financial reporting and monitoring and control

• Support project teams to ensure budgets are prepared in accordance with established procedures and donor budgetary guidelines that meet reporting requirements;
• Support project teams monitoring expenditure against budgets, commitments, delivery and funding; review and processing budget revisions and contributing to project operational and financial closure;
• Undertake routine monitoring of financial exception reports for unusual activities, transactions, and investigation of anomalies or unusual transactions;
• Support in the monitoring of Accounts Receivables and follow up with donor contributions;
• Reconciliation of portfolio expenditures and preparation of various financial reports and ensure timely corrective actions are taken on budget and financial reporting aspects;
• Review partner payment requests for completeness prior to processing, ensuring that documentation needed are complete and that all required procedures are fulfilled to enable the payment;
• Carry out timely corrective actions on unposted vouchers, including budget check errors, match exceptions, unapproved vouchers. Timely response to projects and programmes teams’ requests to resolve financial data issues;
• Support in the planning of financial resources, continuous analysis and monitoring of financial progress and presentation of forecasts for the planning and management of the project;
• Maintain financial oversight on the project activities in line with internal control procedures, financial and fiduciary guidelines and standards for all financial and the related transactions;
• Contribute to the preparation of project workplan and engagement processes focusing on aspects of entering data to systems and tools ensuring compliance to agreement and War Child procedures;
• Coordinate with project team in the preparation and consolidation of cash-flow forecast ensuring inputs are extracted from the budget, cash-flow plans, activity plans and monitoring tools;
• Contribute to the identification of projects risks, participate in the preparation of assurance activities and support project audit activities including implementation of the recommendations; and
• Support the monitoring and advice to project on the financial status including pending and approved budgets; contributions available for expenditure and contributions already expended.

Result: Timely and quality end to end programme/project financial management cycle, from partnerships, proposal and service bid development, monitoring and interim reporting, through to final donor reporting and project close-out.

4. Financial Capacity Assessment, Capacity Building and Knowledge Management

• Support the project team to perform basic evaluation and periodic capacity assessment.
• Support the project team to conduct Due Diligence Assessments (DDAs) of the Implementing Partners (IPs), and manage follow-up actions related to financial recommendations;
• Organize and support IP staff capacity development and training in financial management, in coordination with the project team;
• Provide day-to-day help and guidance to the Implementing Partners (IPs) and ensure IP understanding of, and compliance with the Grant Facility’s operational guidelines, terms and conditions of the grant agreement, and WCH requirements; and
• Actively compile lessons learned and best practices, and share knowledge and best practices with the project team and IPs on financial management, as well as wider personnel working on grants projects

Result: Implementing Partners follow best practice in managing grants and project, through proactive capacity development and mentoring, ensuring War Child’s minimum standards are understood and implemented.

5. Documentation

• Monitor information related to contractual arrangements – on audits, inventories, utilization and all such elements in the contracts and grants
• Ensure that all required records related to the area of work are collected and maintained, both hard copies and electronic copies for easy reference and retrieval
• Support the project team to maintain a database/archive of all financial grant related information and documentation of all the Implementing Partners.

Result: Complete, up to date and accurate grant, project and partnership documentation management system is setup and running efficiently.

Knowledge and Skills

• Relevant experience at the national or international level with responsibility for project accounting, budgeting and financial reporting or related fields;
• Practical experience with INGOs, or UN agencies financial procedures in the areas of accounting, budget, reporting and other financial controls;
• Experience working with grants projects, including monitoring financial performance, reviewing financial reports and providing capacity building support to grantees, is highly desirable;
• Knowledgeable about Ukraine legal requirements on finance and administration, including local taxation;
• Previous experience with, and a good knowledge of the development and humanitarian sector/working with UN, Donors, NGOs is an advantage; and
• Solid computer literacy including Microsoft Office and proficiency with ERP systems (Unit 4 is an advantage).
• Fluency in written and oral English and Ukrainian is required.

Our offer

Local contract with salary and secondary labour conditions based on the in-country salary scale, local T&C’s will apply. Initially the contract will be via a consultancy agreement through December 31, 2024 with the possibility of extension. The role is based on full-time working hours (40 hours per week).

Location

This position is to be based in Kyiv, Ukraine. The successful candidate must be eligible to work in Ukraine. Flexibility to travel within the region is essential.

Our Organisation

War Child is a dynamic organization. We try to keep an informal ambiance within our offices, with a lot of room for creativity, inspiration and self-initiative from employees. We practice what we preach: dynamic, innovative, integrity focused, and a drive to reach the highest possible results against the lowest possible costs.