Finance Officer

Over 80 years ago, Albert Einstein helped create the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Today, we are a leading humanitarian and development organization working in more than 40 countries and 26 U.S. cities to help people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. The IRC has been present in Liberia since 1996 serving as a lead partner in the health sector. The country program supports the Ministry of Health (MOH) in strengthening the health care systems and service delivery at all levels in accordance with the MOH national standards. 

In recent years, IRC Liberia has deepened its commitment to supporting both local civil society organizations and community groups in their recovery efforts - first from the devastating civil war and now from the Ebola crisis.  The Scaling Up Health Services Project presents an opportunity to bring these two critical elements together by strengthening civil society engagement in the delivery of health services and the rebuilding of health systems in Liberia.

 Scope of Work

The IRC has entered into a cooperative agreement with USAID to implement the Scaling Up Health Services Activity project in Liberia.  The Scaling Up Health Services Activity project - a consortium consisting of IRC, Last Mile Health (LMH), Community Safety Initiative (CSI), and Development Education Network-Liberia (DEN-L) - will strengthen the Liberian community health system to provide health care services in hard-to-reach areas to support sustainable country ownership of community-based health services, through technical assistance and capacity building of Ministry of Health (MOH)/County Health Teams (CHTs). The project will increase the coverage of service providers in underserved districts and improve their capacity to deliver quality health services while strengthening CHTs and communities’ capacity to plan, manage and monitor health services.  The project will directly work with local civil society organizations (CSOs) at the county and community level, providing them with funding opportunities and strengthening their technical and operational capacity to play a key role in service delivery.

 Scaling Up Health Services Activity Implementation Overview

Scaling Up Health Services Activity will work in Lofa, Bong, River Gee, and Grand Kru to assist in the decentralization process and ensure that county and community-level systems are equipped to deliver high quality community-based services in line with key MOH strategies. The project staff will work alongside MOH staff of the relevant units, and county officials in strengthening their capacity to effectively supervise and coordinate community-based health activities.

 The project will work with local CSOs who have experience in implementing community health services with geographic focus and experienced in managing restricted funding in delivering quality community health care services. The project will also offer local CSOs funding opportunities through sub-award mechanisms, complemented by technical training and a comprehensive capacity strengthening activities that will see local organizations skills and knowledge being strengthen over the course of the 4-year period.

This position will assist the project team with overseeing monetary disbursements and financial transparency within the county office. The Finance Officer will work under the supervision of the CHC to ensure all financial and administrative issues related to the running of the project are properly managed. The FO will provide technical support to the Community Health Coordinators in the field and the CSOs financial team to ensure compliance and adherence to IRC and USAID financial regulations.

Duties and Responsibilities

 Document Review and Control

• Verify correct coding of expenditure on all Payment Requests, Purchase Orders and Purchase Requests and on all accounting documents.
• Verify correct coding of expenditure on all Payment Requests, Purchase Orders and Purchase Requests and on all accounting documents.
• Ensure completeness and accuracy of supporting documents attachment on payment requests
• Ensure adherence to the Approved Authorization Matrix and Delegations of Authority for all authorizations on payment and purchase requests
• Make payments within set payment turn-over period to avoid delays in handling requests submitted to finance
• Receive commitment tracking for project from Operations for follow up.
• Primary responsibility for Finance liaison with Program and Operations
• Reconciliation of supplies account balances
• Ensure stamp “PAID” in all accounting documents.

Finance, reporting, Communication, and Security

• Manage the bank and field office cash to ensure that there is sufficient fund to run the field activities.
•  Work with the field office program and admin, to consolidate the monthly cash forecast for the field office monthly cash need.
• Produce monthly and quarterly reports to be reviewed by the country Office Finance team.
• Liaise with bank on all banking issues.
• Communicate with Finance main office on security issues within the office and outside the office.
• Report to the FAD/FC any irregularities that occur within the IRC office, staff compound and sites on policy and procedures.
• Support finance main office in reviewing monthly reports for other field offices when necessary.

 Field Office Monitoring, Training & Support

• Acting as the primary liaison for the project office staff for policy or procedure questions.
• Providing training to County Program and admin staffs on IRC Financial procedures and requirements, assists the County admin and program staffs in finance related issues and activities

Payroll Support

• Review Payroll documents such as Time sheets, overtime reports, Staff allowances reports, staff per diems and all other payroll related reports to ensure accuracy and, adequate support documentation.
• Submitting the reviewed payroll reports for Staff to the project Finance & Admin Director for review in time for all staff to be paid by the last day of the month.
• Payment of cash to Incentive Staff and Volunteers and in time for all staff to receive their pay by the last day of the month as required.
• Payment of cash allowances, salary advances, and staff per-diems as approved to Staff and distributed to the required staff in time.

Partnership Management

The field finance staff will be the project first finance liaison with the partner(s) in training, reviewing partners’ financial report, and supporting in the partners’ monitoring. The Finance Officer on the field with support the Sr. Finance Officer-Partnership in the follow up on sub-partners’ activities:

• Follow up with partners’ on outstanding issue from the feedback during the review of financial reports.
• Partners’ share cost allocation at the field level.
• Serve as finance first representative in all partners’ monitoring process on the field.
• Support the local partner’s capacity building in the finance area.
• Serve as liaison to the local partners for questions relating to IRC financial principles and procedures.

 Key Working Relationships

Position Reports to: Finance Coordinator

Position directly supervises:  Non

Indirect Reporting: Community Health Coordinator

Other Internal and/or external contacts:

Internal: Project Team, County Programs, and Operations

External:  none