EHAU Finance Assistant

The Emergencies and Humanitarian Action Unit (EHAU) leads and handles three distinct organization-wide functions within the IRC: Emergency Preparedness and Response: ensuring that assistance that helps crisis affected communities to survive is delivered immediately; Humanitarian Policy and Standards: helping the IRC design and deliver the quality, accountable and ethically sound programs that achieve Core Humanitarian Standards, as well as the essential humanitarian principles of Humanity, Impartiality, Neutrality, Independence; International Safety and Security: working to sustain and grow safe access into the world’s highest need and most volatile locations.

Job Overview:  The EHAU Finance Assistant will provide support to the Unit on IRC’s new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, Microsoft Dynamics 365 branded “Integra”. They will help staff navigate the system and answer the general day-to-day questions. They will assist in the review and validation of EHAU’s transactions, allocations, and funding sources in various IRC systems and management of general finances. The Finance Assistant will ensure that transactions are coded properly per the Unit’s operating budget, investigate miscoded transactions, and liaise with HQ Finance on submission of recodes. In addition, with direction from the Finance Manager, they will assist with funding allocations to specific emergency responses from the EHAU’s various response funds and help track spending on allocations of funds to country programs across various funding sources using the IRC’s accounting databases. Working closely with the Finance Manager, they will also be responsible for financial payroll allocations for the unit’s full-time staff and computation of monthly daily rates for the Emergency Response Team.

This position is ideal for a candidate with a background in basic budgeting and accounting, who has strong organization skills, a high level of personal initiative, and the ability to work well in a multi-cultural and fast-paced environment. The ideal candidate will enjoy juggling multiple responsibilities, while maintaining strong collaborative relationships with HQ and field colleagues.

Major Responsibilities:

Integra:

• Provide support to the Unit on Integra/ERP related issues and ensure communication of new policies and business rules and processes
• Give guidance on codes and business processes such as submitting expense reports, and flag issues with the Integra team and/or Finance
• Assist the Finance Manager with project setup in Integra for new funding sources

Accounting

• Review all EHAU Unit grant codes to determine necessary accounting recodes/revisions; Reach out to appropriate parties for correct codes and carry-out accounting recodes and required supporting documents
• Monitor submission of recodes have been processed and liaise with Finance for any required follow up
• Run expense reports from IRC’s internal accounting system for new country programs or for Emergency-Unit managed funding sources being used by country programs

Funding Management

• Submit Revenue Allocation Journal Vouchers to Finance and update internal grants management system for emergency funding allocations to IRC country programs
• Monitor monthly fund balance report to ensure allocations have been properly made and identify any issues with overspend
• Assist Finance Manager with running transactional reports to track real-time burn rates of Emergency allocations to Country Programs

Time and Effort (T&E) Reporting

• On a monthly basis, work with relevant Country Program Finance Controllers to determine payroll charge codes for deployable Emergency Response Team Staff; Complete Journal Voucher accounting for all deployable staff and submit to Finance based on provided charge codes and associated “Daily Rate” for each staff member
• On a monthly basis, enter payroll allocations into IRC’s internal online time & effort tracking platform (TETRA) for all non-deployable staff; Follow up with staff and supervisors on approvals
• Ensure monthly payroll and deployment codes have been charged properly in ERP system

Budgeting

• Assist the Finance Manager with updating budget templates for new grants and budget realignments to update Integra

• University Degree with coursework in budgeting and accounting
• 1-2 years’ previous work experience is a must; Experience in financial processing preferred
• Attention to detail; Ability to manage multiple, competing deadlines and priorities
• Mastery of basic accounting, budgeting and grant management principles required
• Fluency in all standard PC office software such as Excel, Outlook and Word
• Excellent oral and written communications skills (English) required

Preferred experience & skills:

• Demonstrated ability to successfully work in a fast-paced environment, within and across departments/functions and develop positive relationships with local and remote staff
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills: the ability to efficiently liaise with people within and across departments in a multi-cultural environment
• Good judgment and ability to maintain confidential information
• Strong organizational and time-management skills; proven ability to prioritize and deliver on time

Working Environment:

• Standard office working environment

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