Finance Assistant

Organizational Context

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) supports the transformation to more efficient, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable agrifood systems. FAO's commitment to environmental sustainability is integral to its strategic objectives. The Shared Services Centre (SSC) in Budapest, Hungary, administers processes, manages quality assurance, and drives service excellence through standardization and automation, aiming to enhance customer satisfaction while reducing costs. This role is situated within the SSC.

Job Purpose

The Finance Assistant provides essential finance-related support activities of medium complexity, ensuring the quality, transparency, and consistency of financial processes. This role demands a thorough understanding and interpretation of financial policies, procedures, and practices. The incumbent will offer procedural guidance to other staff members as needed, contributing to the smooth operation of financial services. The position requires autonomous work with initiative, judgment, and responsibility, focusing on facilitating service delivery and meeting client requirements effectively.

Responsibilities

Key responsibilities include reviewing source documents for completeness, accuracy, and validity, and extracting transaction details from the integrated financial system for analysis and verification. The Finance Assistant will investigate and correct errors, perform reviews, and ensure proper clearance procedures are followed. This role involves supporting continuous improvement by participating in testing and implementing new financial process automations. Additionally, the incumbent will assist in monitoring transactions, ensuring due diligence, preparing worksheets, and compiling data for reports. Responsibilities also include drafting correspondence, responding to queries, evaluating financial support needs, adapting service provision, and solving operational problems. Providing procedural guidance and training to junior finance support staff is also a key function.

Work Experience

Requires four years of relevant experience in finance, accounting, cash management, and/or asset management support work. Experience with integrated ERP systems like Oracle and experience in a Shared Services Centre environment are desirable.

Skills

Proficiency in financial rules, regulations, accounting policies, and practices is necessary to ensure strict adherence to processing controls. A good understanding of transaction processing and approval, maintaining audit requirements, and documentation standards is essential. Strong communication, teamwork, and relationship-building skills are important. Desirable skills include intermediate knowledge of another FAO official language and experience with ERP systems.

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