Finance Senior Officer
Colombo
- Organization: UNOPS - United Nations Office for Project Services
- Location: Colombo
- Grade: Junior level - LICA-9, Local Individual Contractors Agreement
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Occupational Groups:
- Banking and Finance
- Closing Date: 2024-10-31
Functional Responsibilities
Ensures finance, business, administration and implementation processes of the project are efficient and integrated to work together focusing on achievement of the following results:
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Comply fully with UN/UNOPS rules, regulations, and policies of financial activities, financial recording/reporting system and follow-up on audit recommendations; implementation of effective internal controls, proper functioning of a client-oriented financial resources management system.
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Identify and map out current business processes, including persons (subject-matter experts) and steps involved.
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Analyse and assist the project unit to develop tools to operationalize improved business process flows, including an overall action plan.
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Develop an amended grant operations manual, as appropriate, for managing the Global Fund’s grants that is aligned with the Government of Sri Lanka’s regulatory framework on processes that impact the Global Fund’s grants.
Accountability of Finance Management and finance procedural systems:
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Review the current financial management information system (FMIS) solution with a view to giving recommendations as to if the current FMIS is fit for purpose.
(The target FMIS should enable MOH to efficiently manage multiple grants and government funding, as well as to provide a holistic view of the financial situation of the organization.The system should be compliant with the applicable government accounting standards, meet the donor accounting and reporting requirements and enable MOH to produce compliant reports in accordance with its applicable accounting framework. In addition, it should provide a solid platform for future development and growth).
HR Oversight of Finance Management personnel
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Review the current Human Resources component in the Finance team of the PIU and other related finance departments pertaining to the project to ascertain if the team has staffing of the right caliber and of the right size to effectively perform its mandate.
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Review the last version of or perform a grant implementer capacity assessment which will identify key gaps in the PRs Financial Management Capacity and propose an action plan to address the same.
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Support the project manager to implement the capacity building plan over a period of not more than six months. This could include;
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Providing hands-on training support on financial and accounting procedures including best practices for financial management as it relates to budgeting, accounting and reporting in various areas in meeting financial management requirements.
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Support staff effectively to enforce internal controls to ensure that all payments are eligible, justified and adequately supported.
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Support the PIU in the oversight management of their Sub-recipient (SR) and other sub-SRs as the case may be;
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performing the financial review of the SRs,
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monitoring and supervision of all SRs and implementer levels below that of SRs
Accounts and payments: Ensures and is accountable for the following:
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Ensure that vouchers processed are matched and completed, transactions are correctly recorded and posted in ERP; travel claims and other entitlements are duly processed.
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Provide quality control of the account by performing ongoing review, analysis and reconciliation of accounts. Investigation of discrepancies and initiation of timely corrective actions on unposted vouchers, including the vouchers with budget check errors, match exceptions, unapproved vouchers. Timely response to PIU and HIQI PM requests to resolve financial data issues.
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Provide monitoring and control of the Accounts Receivables for UNOPS projects and follow up with partners on contributions, maintenance of the General Ledger.
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Ensuring proper maintenance of the financial accounts; preparation of financial records, statements and reports as required or approval of the work of subordinates; coordination of field replies to internal and external audit queries;
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Ensuring proper receipt, management, safeguarding and disbursement of payments handled by the field; review, modification, initiation and implementation of internal control procedures in coordination with PM and PIU;
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Proper control of the supporting documents for payments; preparation of all types of vouchers; Pay Cycle and payments execution;
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Preparation of timely financial reports for submission to the funding agency in accordance with UNOPS rules, and in line with the established procedures;
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Monitoring of financial exception reports for unusual activities, transactions and investigation of anomalies or unusual transactions;
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Ensuring proper maintenance of the Accounts Receivables for UNOPS projects and follow-up with partners on contributions
Financial Oversight of procurement and non procurement transactions
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Support the PIU for the oversight management of all Financial transactions under the grant to ensure that the transactions fulfill the following criteria;
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Proper authorization according to the PR approval authority matrix.
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Availability of complete documentation and coded for data entry.
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Availability of clear evidence of value for money.
The methodology for the position will largely entail in-depth interviews of all persons involved in the business processes, systems and People Management (subject-matter experts) from the PR, SRs as key beneficiaries of services provided by PR, and any other relevant stakeholders. Engagement of SRs and other stakeholders has potential to provide insight into problems identified with the current processes.
Activities to be undertaken include:
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Desk review of Global Fund Policy documents, Global Fund grants (2022 – 2024), (Draft Customized) Operational Manual for Global Fund Grants in Sri Lanka, Programme Based Budgeting Manual, Financial Regulation 1992, Delegation of Financial Authority issued by the Secretary of Health, Digital Health Blueprint, procurement plan among other relevant documents.
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One-on-one interviews with GF grants implementation stakeholders, including the following:
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Programme Accountants and relevant finance staff
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Programme Directors and Coordinators/ Consultants
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Programme Procurement Officer/ Assistant
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Programme Human Resource Officer/ Assistant
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Ministry of Health Chief Finance Officer and relevant Accountant - SR and SSR Accountants/ finance staff
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Business process review (BPR) team meetings and workshops consisting of;
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Initial stakeholder meeting to define roadmap for BPR.
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Workshop for subject-matter experts to determine the current processes and sub-processes; and identify gaps/ problems in relation to global best practices and benchmarks
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Workshop for stakeholders and subject-matter experts to develop an overall business process improvement action plan, and specific tools -technical recommendations and Operation Manual for Global Fund Grants in Sri Lanka.
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Managing UNOPS financial systems on the project, enure compliance and reporting guidelines are fulfilled
Education/Experience/Language requirements
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CPA or Advanced Degree or equivalent in Business Management, Business Administration or related fields is required.
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For internal candidates, a first-level university degree, in combination with over five years’ qualifying experience, may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
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Minimum of five years of professional-level experience in accounting with responsibility for project accounting and preparation of financial statements in a government entity and/or international organization in providing financial management services;
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Knowledge of and/or experience in working with MoH and/or Sri Lanka government sector financial procedures and processes
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Knowledge of financial rules and regulations; working knowledge of ERP (particularly Agresso), experience with MS Office 2003/or newer versions, and financial management, using electronic systems, environment and are desired.
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Full working knowledge of English is required.
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Knowledge of the local language Sinhala or Tamil is an asset.
Applications from non-qualifying applicants will most likely be discarded by the recruiting manager.