Chief accountant

Background

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We believe in the power and potential of every child. But this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion, and discrimination. And it’s girls who are most affected.

Working together with children, young people, our supporters, and partners, we strive for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenges facing girls and all vulnerable children.

We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood. And we enable children to prepare for – and respond to – crises and adversity. We drive changes in practice and policy at local, national, and global levels using our reach, experience, and knowledge.

We have been building powerful partnerships for children for over 80 years and are now active in more than 75 countries.

Role Purpose

Plan International is committed to ensuring gender equality is core to our humanitarian work. Central to this is ensuring our work is analysed through a gender lens. 

The war in Ukraine lead to a major humanitarian crisis with over 3 million people having fled to neighbouring countries, and millions displaced within Ukraine. Plan International is responding to the crisis and working in partnership with civil society organisations in Ukraine to meet the key needs of those affected by the crisis as well as host communities. 

The position contributes to this goal by supporting the finance and accounts function for the Ukraine office and its activities in the country by ensuring efficiency, effectiveness and value for money transactions.

The role complements the Ukraine Finance Manager in Country finance corporate systems, financial reporting and internal financial controls.

Accountabilities

 1.Budget Processes

• Support in preparation of realistic program and budgets
• Support the Finance Manager in the Master budgeting and updates 

 2.Payment Processes

• Review and post in SAP financial transactions 
• Support and facilitate the preparation payments to suppliers
• Post journals and invoices in SAP for processing
• Process partner advances ensuring effective follow-up and liquidation in SAP

 3.Reconciliations

• Prepare, reconcile monthly VAT and Withholding tax schedules for payment.
• Reconciliation of balance sheet accounts (receipt voucher / invoice received; bank account, etc.) every month and collaborate with the GH accounting teams to resolve outstanding items
• Monitoring of national commitments in SAP ensuring that there are no more pending commitments (more than three months) in the system without adequate explanation
• Support transfer and liquidation of Partner Advances-Including resolving with programs the unjustified long-term advance balances

 4.Period-End Processes

• Review transactions postings and prepare correction journals for errors before period closure.
• Prepare adjustment journals for accruals, expense prepayments and redistribute support costs to projects.
• Prepare allocated financial reports on monthly, quarterly and annual, including adhoc reports.
• Perform the cost allocation process at the end of each period (or month).
• Ensure monthly bank reconciliations and Target Bank Balance Report are prepared
• Check correctness of all balance items data in SAP before closing of the month and prepare Balance sheet items movement report after end of the month.  

 5.Intercompany Processes

• Process inter Company transactions and ensure reconciled with different countries/GH.

 6.Payroll Processes

• Review and ensure all local legalization in the advance and final payroll of employee
• Support payroll transfer of salaries to staff bank accounts.
• Ensure monthly payroll reconciliation between SAP and payroll.
• Support remittance of payroll deductions to relevant institutions.

 7. Treasury Management 

• Ensure effective cash management with sufficient cash, for the day-to-day operations of the country office.
• Prepare cash forecast in consultation with program and administration staff.
• Updates all financial supporting documents in physical file and archiving folder appropriately 

 8. Internal Financial Controls and compliance

• Ensure that the appropriate financial control processes, procedures and systems are in place and followed in the country office.
• Follow up on the implementation of audit report recommendations within the allotted time

 9. Capacity Building and Line Management 

• Supervise the accounting system (SAP) and Local accounting system (BAF) and provide the necessary support to financial and non-financial staff in their daily tasks
• Supervise the activities of the admin and finance assistant.

Key relationships

Finance Manager, Grants & Finance Specialist, Finance Assistant, Projects staff and other support staff (HR, Finance and Logistics).

Technical expertise, skills, and knowledge

Essential Knowledge

• Qualified accountant or part qualified accountant
• Excellent knowledge of IFRS system and Ukrainian regulations
• Extensive experience of Finance (accounting; reporting; grants finance; financial planning and analysis) in an INGO at Field and Country Office level.
• Demonstrable understanding of the humanitarian sector and ways of working.
• Knowledge of internal controls in financial management.
• Strong financial systems expertise. Fluency with complex financial systems including multi-currency accounting packages / ERP.
• Experience of developing Standard Operating Procedures and guidance notes
• Experience in leading financial teams in Emergency Responses.
• Knowledge of the requirements of the major emergency donors and experience in budgeting and reporting to donors.
• Knowledge and experience in using SAP and Microsoft D365.

Essential Skills

• Communicates clearly, effectively and as appropriate to the audience.
• Able to build networks and relationships under challenging conditions to promote high performance.
• Experience of, and well-developed skills in, staff management, supervision and capacity building.
• Values working in a team and willing to take on more responsibilities and support team members.
• Comfortable in challenging at all levels.
• Resilient under long term pressure; thrives in dynamic fluid environments: adaptable and proactive.
• Solution focused; able to prioritise, deliver on time and cope with ambiguity.
• Sensitivity to a wide range of cultures, context and varying levels of finance capability.
• Strong written and spoken English. 
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills, including sufficient political credibility to work across all layers in the Global Hub Finance Teams.
• Strong numerical skills;
• Work is accurate, thorough, methodical and well organised;
• The ability to co-ordinate and plan work efficiently in order to meet deadlines and prioritise effectively;
• Able to work well under pressure;
• Strong written and oral communication skills and ability to communicate with employees with different levels of financial understanding.

Essential Behaviours 

• Good relationship building skills;
• Communicates clearly and effectively;
• Behaves calmly and consistently in approach to work and decision making;
• Is tenacious and ensures that problems are resolved.

ACCOUNTABILITY TO AFFECTED POPULATIONS (AAP)

Plan International is committed to ensuring accountability to affected population and ensuring that programmes and operations are driven by the needs, priorities, and preferences of affect populations including men, women, boys, girls, and any marginalized groups. This is achieved by an all staff commitment to the ensuring the integration of participatory approaches, open, honest communication, and mechanisms to listen and act on feedback.

• Ensure processes and procedures are flexible enough to allow for changes as community context and needs evolve 
• Support programmes and operations to respond to issues or requests raised through community feedback monitoring data 
• Procurement and logistic decisions should be informed by community preferences.  

SAFEGUARDING, GENDER EQUALITY AND INCLUSION 

• Ensures that Plan International’s global policies for Safeguarding and Gender Equality and Inclusion are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures

Plan International’s Values in Practice

We are open and accountable

We create a climate of trust inside and outside the organisation by being open, honest and transparent. We hold ourselves and others to account for the decisions we make and for our impact on others, while doing what we say we will do.

We strive for lasting impact

We strive to achieve significant and lasting impact on the lives of children and young people, and to secure equality for girls. We challenge ourselves to be bold, courageous, responsive, focused and innovative.

We work well together

We succeed by working effectively with others, inside and outside the organisation, including our sponsors and donors. We actively support our colleagues, helping them to achieve their goals. We come together to create and implement solutions in our teams, across Plan International, with children, girls, young people, communities and our partners.

We are inclusive and empowering

We respect all people, appreciate differences and challenge inequality in our programmes and our workplace. We support children, girls and young people to increase their confidence and to change their own lives. We empower our staff to give their best and develop their potential.