Finance Management Consultant

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT

TERMS OF REFERENCE

I. BACKGROUND

CHADET exists to inspire effective partnerships that ensure provision of quality services for children made vulnerable by street life and work, risky migration, early marriage, orphanhood, domestic work and HIV. Every year CHADET supports nearly 20,000 such children.

CHADET and ChildHope UK are implementing a Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) project funded by the UK government. The project is supporting 16,503 girls facing problems of early marriage, domestic labour, risky child migration and street life to enrol in school and learn useful knowledge and skills. It is achieving this by:

· Financing girls’ additional education-related costs;

· Providing girls literacy and numeracy tutorials;

· Creating safer, stimulating and inclusive school environments;

· Supporting families to improve livelihoods; and

· Stakeholders to sustain work initiated by the project.

This work has resulted into substantial growth in size and scope of CHADET.

CHADET and ChildHope UK are looking to engage a finance management consultant to support and mentor CHADET’s finance team to implement reliable financial management systems[1] that will lead to efficient and transparent use of GEC and other funds.

Since the start of the GEC project, the donor has conducted quarterly finance monitoring and audits. The resulting reports indicate weaknesses in the financial management system. Despite efforts by CHADET and ChildHope to follow up on these audit recommendations, some structural problems remain. To mitigate these weaknesses ChildHope and CHADET developed a plan of action to strengthen the financial management system.

The plan aims at

· Strengthening internal control procedures;

· Strengthening capacity for internal audit;

· Improving accounting and record keeping; and

· Training finance managers and staff at the field level with regard to internal control procedures.

II. OBJECTIVES

The objective of the consultancy is to ensure CHADET’s financial management becomes more effective, efficient, transparent and of good quality. The consultant will also contribute to improving the flow of good quality financial information from field offices, between CHADET finance and programme teams, to ChildHope finance team and ultimately the donor. To this end, the Financial Management Consultant shall perform the role of technical advisor and mentor to CHADET Finance Manager.

A key indicator of success in the short term will be the ability of the CHADET finance team to host quarterly donor finance monitoring visits effectively, providing all the required information as and when requested by the monitors, with minimal additional support needed from other teams or individuals, and resulting in a positive feedback report from the donor.

III. SPECIFIC ROLES AND TASKS

Financial management consultant shall specifically perform the following functions and duties:

A: FINANCE STRENGTHENING MEASURES AND AUDIT RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Assess status of implementing finance strengthening measures highlighted by donor finance monitoring visits, ChildHope finance support visit and external audits.
2. Guide CHADET Finance Manager to set up of a plan for monitoring the implementation of finance strengthening measures and audit recommendations particularly made by DFID;
3. Train and mentor CHADET finance team in preparing for external finance monitoring visits and audits.

B. DONOR COMPLIANCE

1. Develop a quick and detailed understanding of the DFID GEC programme finance procedures and requirements and become well-versed on CHADET’s project details and progress;
2. Mentor CHADET Finance Manager and GEC Finance Officer in GEC payment by results frameworks
3. Monitor CHADET’s fulfilment of commitments, as stated in the Accountable Grant Arrangement and support the CHADET Finance manager and GEC Project Manager in reviewing and managing associated risks of non-compliance;

C. ACCOUNTING

1. Ensure that GEC project transactions are accurately recorded, reconciled, and up to date. The current finance system used in CHADET is Sage 50 Accounting.
2. Analysing GEC project budgets and regularly presenting financial data in agreed formats
3. Review CHADET’S systems and processes for transferring financial information from field offices to headquarters, and making practical changes for improving efficiency in reporting processes and timeframes.
4. Ensure finance processes for GEC project are in place to monitor project spending and report back to the donor. Conducting budget versus actuals monitoring at least bi-weekly and escalating variances as required.
5. Designing financial reporting systems and tools and supporting the GEC team (CHADET) to use these to report against the required donor format.
6. Streamline expenditure approval and authorisations process.
7. Develop a plan to ensure timely production of monthly bank reconciliations
8. Support Finance Manager to put in place an efficient plan for reviewing, checking and processing of financial reports from partners in the field.
9. Review all filing and storage of financial records and propose an efficient filling system

D. PLANNING, ANALYSIS & REPORTING

1. Analysing the impact of project payment arrangements on GEC project cash flow (including payment-by-results) and preparing timely cash requests based on quarterly forecasts and cash balances.
2. Ensure monthly variance analysis for budget vs actual analysis is carried out monthly.
3. Support Finance Manager to produce monthly finance reports, analysis and accompanying commentary for SMT, MD and CH.
4. Mentor Finance Manager and GEC Project Manager to analyse variances and explore potential problems
5. Support Finance Manager prepare timely quality monthly and quarterly project expenditure forecast and finance reports, Requests for Funds;
6. Mentor Finance and Project Managers to manage auditing process and ensure project Annual audited accounts report is submitted in good time.

E. TRAINING

1. Carry out regular field monitoring visits to provide capacity building to field finance teams ensuring compliance with CHADET’s internal financial guidelines;

IV. METHODOLOGY AND DURATION

The role of the consultant is to support the CHADET finance team in these tasks as well as to provide independent reporting on the progress of this work. The consultant will be based at CHADET for approximately 6 months. The consultant with guidance from CHADET Managing Director will prepare, at the beginning of the consultancy, a work plan covering the whole period of the contract. The work plan will be approved by ChildHope. During the period of the contract, the consultant will work under the guidance of ChildHope Head of Finance.

The consultancy will have two phases:

1. Phase One: From the contract date to 20 July 2015; will be mainly focused on technical assistance for the preparation of the Action Plan;
2. Phase Two: From 1 August 2015 to 15 December 2015; will be mainly focused on technical assistance for the implementation of the Action Plan and progress monitoring.

V. REPORTING

The consultant will provide the following reports to Managing Director CHADET with a dotted line to CH Head of Finance: monthly progress reports from the date of the signing of the contract.

Final report will be submitted on 15 December 2015.

The report will evaluate the status of the financial management systems in relation to the objectives of the Action Plan and suggest measures to be taken for the 6 months following implementation of the plan.

All reporting will be in English.

VI. QUALIFICATION AND PROFESSIONAL REQUIREMENTS

The consultant should meet the qualifications and requirements below:

· Internationally recognised professional charter qualifications such as ACCA, ACA or equivalent;

· A minimum of five years’ post-qualification experience working in a similar position;

· Experience reporting on DFID, USAID or EC funded programmes of budgets of over US$ 3m;

· Experience in institutionalizing financial policies and procedures and internal control systems;

· Strong attention to detail and a high level of organization;

· Previous experience of the following: advice, facilitation and mentoring, dialogue and negotiation capacity

· basic aspects of audit

· Experience in internal and external oversight of the finance teams in Ethiopia

· Solid understanding of the financial procedures and regulations of the Government of Ethiopia 70/30

· Fluency in English and Amharic;

· Available immediately.

HOW TO APPLY:

Interested candidates should submit their application using the attached application form and attach a scanned copy of their accounting qualification to the following emails: aganapathiraju@childhope.org.ukcopying ananniaa@chadet.orgby 7th July 2015.

Interviews will be held on 13th July 2015 and contract start 20th July 2015.