Finance Manager

Position: Finance Manager
Location: Manila, Philippines
Reports to: Country Director

About RI: Relief International is a leading nonprofit organization working in 15 countries to relieve poverty, ensure well-being and advance dignity. We specialize in fragile settings, responding to natural disasters, humanitarian crises and chronic poverty.
Relief International combines humanitarian and development approaches to provide immediate services while laying the groundwork for long-term impact. Our signature approach — which we call the RI Way—emphasizes local participation, an integration of services, strategic partnerships and a focus on civic skills. In this way, we empower communities to find, design and implement the solutions that work best for them.
Relief International includes the four corporate members of the RI Alliance: RI-US, RI-UK, MRCA/RI-France and RI-Europe. Under our alliance agreement, we operate as a single, shared management structure. In addition, RI has country offices registered as affiliates of one of the alliance members in an additional 18 countries.
Position Summary: The Finance Manager (FM) will be responsible for the strategic direction and leadership of all Finance functions of the Country Program. The FM will also have responsibility for ensuring that all financial transactions for the Country Program are accounted for and documented accurately. He/she will be responsible for ensuring that all RI accounting procedures are followed and budgets are adhered to; all donor and HQ reporting requirements and deadlines are met; cash is controlled and accounted for in a timely manner in accordance with RI, donor and audit requirements; costs are correctly allocated to multiple projects.

Position Responsibilities and Duties:

Financial operations
• Supervise finance operations to ensure adequate support is provided to field teams, ensure adequate structure and capacity in field offices to provide effective support to programs.
• Proactively identifies and acts upon deficiencies and areas for improvement in the Finance team, providing training and other capacity-building where necessary to ensure that capacity is continuously developing.
• In coordination with operational team, supports the tracking and monitoring of procurements and expenditures, office purchasing, inventory, and requisition system.

Financial management
• Review and approve transactional data entry in NetSuite financial system.
• Prepare, review and verify monthly financial accounts of the country office.

. Coordinate, plan and supervise cash flow plans and ensure availability of funds and the accurate maintaining of bank accounts.
• Ensure safeguard of bank checks and cash receipts.
• Manage bank relations and ensure positive engagement and service delivery.
• Coordinate cash facilitation arrangement for field offices.
• Review and approve bank reconciliations.
• Maintains financial records as per RI policies and procedures.

Financial reporting
• Coordinate the preparation of project and donor financial reporting.
• Reviews donor reports and reconciliation to financial records. Ensure prompt and timely submission of the donor reports.
• The Finance Manager is the focal point for communication with the donor on finance-related issues and ensures overall accountability for the quality, accuracy and timeliness of donor reports.
• Coordinates the preparation of the project budget variance analysis reports and overall country office financial management reports.

Budgeting and Grant management
• Lead the process of preparing the proposal budgets in coordination with other departments in the country team and ensure that the correct donor templates are used for budgeting.
• Lead the preparation of the Country Master Budget and ensuring that the same is updated on quarterly basis.
• Ensure that RI grants are implemented based on donor regulations
• Assist Grant Opening and Closing meetings, as well as monthly/regular grants review meetings and maintain proper records for all budgets.
• Monitor RI grants and advise program team on the spending to avoid over/under spent of the project
• Reviews budget revision in close coordination with Program Director when necessary
• Lead budget realignment exercises as needed.
• Monitor the program budgets and expenditure in the BVA.
• Conduct review of budgeting and actual expenditures and develop analysis tool to better follow up of over/under spent of the grant.

Audit
• Point person for country office level external audits.
• Supports global project audits and USG single audits to ensure adequate and prompt response are provided on time.
• Makes records available on request and in consultation with Global audit team, ensures appropriate follow up on audit queries.

Policy and procedures
• Ensures compliance to RI policies and procedures.
• In coordination with senior management team, coordinates the review and update of country specific SOPs and ensures alignment to RI policies and procedures, accounting standards while maintaining congruence to donor regulations and compliance standards.

Financial Systems
• Supervise the use and controls around the NetSuite financial systems.
• Point person to communicate and trouble shoot system issues, escalate to regional office and HQ on technical issues.
• Provide training and capacity enhancement to finance teams.
• Ensure transactional documents are scanned and archived to cloud contents management platform.

Payroll
• Review and reconcile monthly payroll records financial records.
• Coordinate the monthly payroll processing in good time. Supervise the reconciliation of payroll supporting documents for completeness and accuracy.
• Conducts monthly reconciliation of the accrued payroll accounts.
• Periodically reconciles NetSuite payroll ledgers to the payroll database.

Internal control
• Ensure adequate internal control is maintained and enforced in the country office finance practices.
• Enforce adequate segregation of duties and counter controls for the field offices to provide adequate oversight of the organizations assets.

Safeguarding
• Uphold and promote RI’s commitment to ensuring the safeguarding and safety of the vulnerable communities we serve
• Ensure that your behaviour inside and outside of work promotes the values outlined with RI’s code of conduct and safeguarding policies
• Consistent with RI’s safeguarding and protection policies, contribute to ensuring that all those who come into contact with Relief International staff and the communities we serve can be trusted to work safely with them
• Support and develop systems that create and maintain an environment that prevents sexual exploitation and abuse and promotes the implementation of the Code of Conduct and safeguarding policies
• Work collaboratively with the Global Safeguarding Manager to advocate for the inclusion of safeguarding activities and resources within program
• Ability to demonstrate knowledge of donor requirements of safeguarding standards and protection from exploitation and abuse.

Required skills and competencies:

This position demands a dynamic individual with a demonstrated ability to achieve results in a demanding and fast paced environment.
• Bachelor’s degree in accounting, business management or similar first level degree required. Advanced university degree in Finance, Accounting or certification with professional accounting body – ACCA/CPA preferred;
• A minimum of 5 years’ experience as Finance supervisor / lead position and 3 years with international non–profit agencies. US government funded grants financial and administrative management experience preferred;

. Excellent financial and analytical skills;
• Excellent communication and drafting skills for effective reporting on program financial performance;
• Ability to manage a financial/monitoring team and demonstrate leadership;
• Ability to operate in a cross-cultural environment requiring flexibility;
• Familiarity with the aid system, and understanding of donor and governmental requirements;
• Experience managing consortium grants will be an asset;
• The candidate must be detail-oriented and able to work independently;
• Demonstrable ability to adapt to challenging working environments within a developing country context;
• Demonstrated experience in identifying issues in financial management, applying sustainable solutions, and supporting teams to achieve result;
• Proven experience in training and capacity building of staff and teams, including coaching and mentoring staff;
• Knowledge and use of financial software packages. NetSuite experience is preferred
• Ability to adapt quickly to a new environment and achieve results with multiple priorities and deadline.

RI Values:

We uphold the Humanitarian Principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and operational independence. We affirmatively engage the most vulnerable communities. We value:
• Inclusiveness
• Transparency and Accountability
• Agility and Innovation
• Collaboration
• Sustainability