Senior Finance and Budget Assistant

The Senior Finance and Budget Assistant supports the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity by performing budget and finance duties including budget review, monitoring expenditures, treasury functions, and grants financial management. The role also involves supervising other general service staff and assisting with data analysis and reporting.

Responsibilities

• Acts as Certifying Officer on behalf of, and in the absence of the SCBD Finance Officers.
• Reviews, analyzes, and assists in the finalization of cost estimates and budget proposals, ensuring compliance with the SCBD RBB framework and other legislative mandates.
• Assists managers in the elaboration of resource requirements for budget submissions.
• Undertakes research and provides support to higher level Finance Officers with respect to budget reviews of relevant intergovernmental and expert bodies.
• Provides input into the preparation of allotments, including redeployment of funds when necessary, ensuring appropriate expenditures.
• Monitors budget implementation/expenditures and recommends reallocation of funds as necessary.
• Reviews requisitions for goods and services to ensure correct objects of expenditure and availability of funds.
• Monitors extra-budgetary resources, including review of agreements and cost plans, ensuring compliance with regulations and rules and established policies and procedures.
• Assists in the preparation of budget performance submissions and finalization of budget performance reports, analyzing variances between approved budgets and actual expenditures.
• Monitors integrity of various financial databases and verifies accuracy of input data.
• Manages grants' financial management.
• Reviews, analyzes and processes payments to third-parties, commercial entities, and individuals.
• Reviews incoming payment instructions about banking details and sources of funds.
• Prepares payments for final disbursement by Cashier and dispatches payment instructions and cheques to banks.
• Creates receipts and deposits for all incoming funds and notifies payees of status of payments.
• Assists staff members, Finance Officers and donors regarding queries on payment and deposit related issues.
• Investigates complaints on non-receipts and monitors reviews/methods used to remit payments.
• Assists in preparation of periodical reports: cash flow, contributions, etc.
• Follows up on audit recommendations and fraud cases.
• Files and archives as required.
• Keeps up to date on documents/reports/guidelines related to programme and/or peacekeeping budgets, ensuring compliance with intergovernmental recommendations and United Nations policies and procedures.
• Drafts or prepares correspondence to respond to enquiries in respect to relevant financial and budget matters.
• Provides guidance, training and daily supervision to other general service staff in the area of responsibility.
• Assists with the collection and analysis of data as well as preparation of data presentations and reports for information sharing, responding to queries, knowledge management, planning and decision making.
• Assists with visualizations and updating information material such as web pages or brochures.
• Performs other related duties, as assigned.

Requirements

• High school diploma or equivalent is required.
• Relevant technical training in accounting and/or finance is desirable.
• A minimum of ten (10) years of experience in budget/finance or related area is required.
• The minimum number of years of relevant experience is reduced by two (2) years for candidates who possess a first-level university degree.
• A minimum of three (3) years of experience inputting and exporting data from an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, preferably SAP (UN Umoja) or similar system, is required.
• Experience using Microsoft Office applications, including Excel (Advanced), Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, SharePoint, and Teams, is required.
• Experience in supervising staff or work of others is desirable.
• A minimum of one (1) or more years of experience in data analysis or related area is desirable.
• English is required at UN Level II for reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

Skills

• Budget Management
• Financial Reporting
• Treasury Functions
• Grants Management
• Data Analysis
• ERP System Experience
• SAP
• Microsoft Excel Intermediate
• MS Word
• MS PowerPoint
• Microsoft Outlook
• Microsoft SharePoint
• MS Teams
• Staff Supervision

Languages

English