Finance Assistant

Organizational Context

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian organization, dedicated to saving lives in emergencies and building pathways to peace and prosperity. WFP utilizes food assistance to support people recovering from conflict, disasters, and climate change impacts. We are committed to a diverse, skilled, and high-performing workforce operating in an inclusive environment, upholding our core values.

Job Purpose

Under the guidance of the Country Director and direct supervision of the Finance Officer, the Finance Assistant provides essential procedural and technical support in finance and budget management. This role ensures compliance with WFP financial policies, rules, and regulations. Key responsibilities include monitoring expenditure forecasts, preparing financial reports, managing bank and petty cash accounts, verifying vendor claims, and processing payments to ensure timely disbursement and adherence to financial standards. The assistant will also retrieve, format, and validate financial data, record expenses against approved budgets, and prepare financial documentation such as bank transfer sheets and customer invoices. Furthermore, the role involves maintaining financial records, acting as a petty cash cashier, contributing to financial market analysis, and supporting the capacity development of cooperating partners through financial spot-checks and guidance. This position is crucial for maintaining accurate financial operations and supporting informed decision-making within the organization.

Responsibilities

The Finance Assistant, under the guidance of the Country Director and supervision of the Finance Officer, plays a crucial role in supporting financial operations. Key responsibilities include providing procedural and technical assistance to staff, ensuring adherence to WFP’s financial policies, rules, and regulations. This involves monitoring monthly expenditure forecasts and generating reports to aid informed decision-making. The role requires regular monitoring of bank and petty cash accounts, forecasting expenditures to ensure adequate funding, and timely disbursement of funds. A significant duty is verifying vendor claims, advances, and receivables to ensure prompt and compliant payments. The Finance Assistant also compiles information for financial reports on budgets, expenditures, and contributions, and retrieves, formats, and validates data from financial systems, addressing any discrepancies. They monitor and record expenses against approved budgets, prepare bank transfer sheets and currency conversion requests, and generate invoices and receipts. Maintaining financial records in Teams, acting as a petty cash cashier, contributing to financial market analysis, and supporting cooperating partners in financial management through training and spot-checks are also integral. The position may involve providing on-the-job training to other support staff to ensure consistent service delivery and performing other related duties as required.

Work Experience

The work experience requirements are not explicitly detailed in the provided text. However, the role involves assisting with financial and budget procedures, monitoring expenditures, verifying vendor claims, preparing financial reports, managing petty cash, and contributing to financial analysis. The position also requires contributing to the capacity development of cooperating partners in financial management and providing guidance to support staff.

Skills

Financial analysis, Budget monitoring, Expenditure forecasting, Vendor claim verification, Financial reporting, Data validation, Bank reconciliation, Petty cash management, Invoicing, Record keeping, Capacity development, On-the-job training

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