JOB DESCRIPTION
The Accountant will play a key role in ensuring adherence to financial policies, project policies and procedures, regulations, controls and financial management systems. The Accountant will provide accounting and financial analysis support to the project office and will ensure the submission of financial reports based on internal deadlines. This position will ensure the compliance of all accounting and financial reporting functions. The Accountant is responsible for cost recording and daily general accounting, accounts receivable/creditors, payroll, financial risk management, and, managing relationships with partners, ensuring that all backup documentation is ready for audit, and troubleshooting accounting issues.The Accountant is also responsible for the cash flow analysis and overall financial well-being of the project.
MAIN TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Financial Report
- Develops and maintains reports on the status of financial management activities (for example, monthly and quarterly reports).
- Responsible for ensuring that the project inventory/asset report is balanced with the general ledger/FAS/vFER prior to submission to USAID.
- Responsible for ensuring that all contractual financial reporting requirements are identified and met in a timely and accurate manner.
- S’ ensures that tax reporting procedures are well documented to facilitate timely preparation and submission.
- Monitors and submits advance, commitment and grant reports, as appropriate.
- Develops and submits other necessary project reports based on the requirements for registration with local authorities.
- Monitors and reports on partner/supplier payment schedules and obligations.
- Provides annual spending budgets and quarterly forecasts against budget statements (expenses payable, financial pipelines, etc.), if applicable.
Auditing
- Supports the preparation of internal and external audits.
- Supports responses and actions to internal audit comments.
- Performs daily reviews of supporting documentation to ensure completeness, accuracy and full compliance with all regulations and the Field Operations Manual (FOM in English).
- Performs regular one-time audits on project files.
- S’ ensures that adequate supporting documentation is uploaded to the relevant system within the established time frames.
Policies & procedures
- S’ ensures that accounting policies and practices are implemented in accordance with generally accepted standards of accounting principles (GAAP) ; internal project controls are established and implemented in accordance with DAI policies, USAID rules/regulations, and contract terms.
General Compatibility
- Launch of transfer requests for the implementation of the project in the field.
- Verifies the accuracy of supplier invoices.
- Verifies the accuracy of project expenses and accounting codes.
- Performs regular cash flow analyses to ensure the availability of funds and the accurate maintenance of bank balances.
- S’ ensures the accurate and timely processing of invoices, advances and refunds, checks and payments by bank transfer.
- S’ ensures that payment requests have the appropriate approvals.
- Guarantees the timely deposit of cash receipts.
- Responsible for recording and allocating costs based on the approved budget in the field accounting system (FAS/vFER).
- Performs monthly bank reconciliations and regularly monitors bank account balances.
- Checks supporting documentation for all project related transactions and ensures completeness and proper review and approvals are documented.
- Responsible for ensuring that petty cash is maintained according to the maximum petty cash policy, and that all petty cash procedures are followed.
- S’ ensures the protection of bank cheques and cash receipts.
- Manages periodic payments to local authorities (Income tax, Social Security, etc.) ensuring that they are made in a timely and accurate manner.
- S’ ensures the availability of bank cheque books and coordinates periodic updates for bank account signatories.
- Prepares, reviews, and submits project cost data before submitting Oracle data reports to DAI Washington.
- Maintenance of file management systems for documentation in flexible and hard copy.
- Keeps records of grant/purchase/subcontract documents and amendments, as applicable.
- Directs the schedule of financial activities to ensure timely preparation of reports related to the budget.
- Performs periodic cash counting.
- Records non-billable expenses as appropriate and ensures that they are carefully reviewed and kept to a minimum.
- S’ ensures that foreign taxes paid, if any, are tracked, recorded and reported to USAID in accordance with USAID’s Automated Guidance System (ADS) guidelines.
- Regularly analyzes and reconciles the project inventory to ensure the value/purchase price of project assets reflected in the inventory register is in accordance with the total indicated in the cumulative balance of the non-consumable assets account.
Advances and Travel Refunds
- Reviews travel requests and expense reports for their accuracy and compliance.
- Follows procedures to ensure accurate and timely payment as well as reconciliation of travel advances, travel refunds from project staff and partners.
- Develops and monitors the outstanding advances report with particular attention to outstanding advances after 30 days of issuance.
Payroll
- Processes payroll payments on time and accurately for the office and ensures that leave balances and payroll taxes and deductions are accurate.
- Tracks and monitors leave balances and liability payments.
- S’ ensures the compliance of staff with the policy of time management and record keeping.
Financial Systems
- Regularly uses the field accounting system (FAS/vFER), cloud software for supporting documentation, DAI project management system (TAMIS), etc.
- Communicates with the headquarters system support teams for troubleshooting technical problems with the system or operations.
- Ensures voucher files are scanned and uploaded to the ICD System for Financial Documentation Electronic Archiving – SharePoint.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor Degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration or equivalent and 7 years of experience in supporting projects funded by international donors. The professional qualification d’ Accountant and financial (CPA in English) is preferred.
- Relevant experience and progressive responsibility in finance and accounting, including experience in directing and managing the financial aspects of USAID projects, including, including a demonstrated understanding of the contractual regulations of the American government related to finance.
- Accuracy in working with large amounts of data
- Experience with business accounting software and the Microsoft Office suite.
- Ability to respond effectively to time-sensitive requests
- An eloquent person who has excellent communication and personnel management skills and can relate to people at all levels of an organization.
- A well-organized and self-reliant person with strong technical skills, analytical ability, good judgment and strong operational focus
- Oral and written professional proficiency in english and french ; oral and written professional proficiency in malagasy is also highly preferred.
