Finance Manager, Awards Management Unit

The Finance Manager, Awards Management Unit, leads the unit responsible for financial donor reporting, awards financial oversight, revenue recognition, project financial closure, fund monitoring, and related financial processes to ensure compliance with IPSAS, internal controls, donor agreements, and UN-Women financial regulations. The role involves managing a geographically dispersed team, developing financial policies, and driving continuous improvement and automation in financial management.

Responsibilities

• Lead the preparation, quality assurance and timely submission of all certified, interim, final and ad hoc donor financial reports in accordance with contribution agreements, donor requirements, and UN-Women policies and procedures.
• Establish donor reporting schedules, procedures and quality assurance mechanisms to ensure timely, accurate and consistent financial reporting for all earmarked resources across UN-Women.
• Oversee donor reporting obligations, monitor reporting risks, and ensure timely corrective actions and escalation of significant issues.
• Oversee UN-Women's responses to donor enquiries related to financial reporting.
• Establish, document and continuously enhance donor financial reporting policies, procedures, guidance materials and standard operating procedures.
• Drive the continuous improvement and automation of donor financial reporting processes, including the design, development and deployment of new financial reports and reporting tools.
• Continuously enhance donor financial reporting content and presentation by incorporating evolving donor requirements, audit recommendations and best practices across the UN system.
• Coordinate capacity development and provide technical guidance to Headquarters, regional and country offices on donor financial reporting requirements and practices.
• Lead the financial closure of projects across UN-Women in accordance with the financial regulations, rules, policies and procedures.
• Establish procedures for the timely resolution of outstanding earmarked fund balances following contribution agreement expiry, ensuring that remaining balances are reprogrammed or refunded in accordance with donor agreements.
• Establish and maintain project financial closure policies, standard operating procedures and business processes.
• Monitor project financial closure performance across Headquarters, regional and country offices to ensure timely completion of outstanding closure activities including through regular reporting to management on projects overdue for closure due to non-compliance with due processes and procedures.
• Issue instructions and oversee financial adjustments required to facilitate project closure.
• Develop automated tools, management reports and performance indicators supporting project financial closure.
• Coordinate organizational capacity-building initiatives and provide technical guidance on project financial closure.
• Lead fund monitoring to ensure the integrity of earmarked resources financial management and compliance with UN-Women financial regulations, rules, policies, procedures and donor requirements.
• Review requests for prefinancing of earmarked contributions and recommend approval or rejection based on risk assessments that balance operational requirements with appropriate risk mitigation measures liaising directly with the Deputy Director, Financial Management on pre-financing requests.
• Establish and oversee control procedures to ensure the overall accuracy, at material level, of General Ledger budgetary control cash balances for earmarked resources, including the identification, analysis and resolution of systemic issues.
• Establish and oversee procedures for the timely identification and resolution of expenses incurred in excess of contributions received, directing work of Awards Management Unit with budget-holding offices and Integrated Resource Management Section (IRMS), where needed, to ensure timely corrective action.
• Oversee due application of fund accounting in UN-Women recommending updates and improvements to fund tree, introducing new and revising existing fund structure and grouping to facilitate due resource management, and enable accuracy and efficiency in financial donor and management reporting; liaise with the system accountant and IRMS to implement the changes.
• Supervise transfer of funds between projects, funds, cost centers and donors ensuring appropriateness of relevant transfers including compliance with donor agreements and applicable policies, procedures and instructions.
• Develop and oversee implementation of procedures to ensure accuracy of corporate fund balances ensuring consistency in recording across projects, funds, cost centers and donors for any single award.
• Oversee the review of adjustments and corrections to transactions and balances initiated by the budget-holding offices after issuance of financial donor reports, from donor reporting perspective, ensuring that integrity and consistency of financial donor reports already issued is preserved.
• Prepare management reports highlighting key performance indicators on fund management including aged fund balances, expenses in excess of contributions received, outstanding prefinancing amounts, recurring errors in fund accounting, and other issues.
• Develop and maintain policies, procedures, business processes and standard operating procedures on fund monitoring and awards management issues under the purview of Awards Management Unit.
• Drive automation initiatives and ERP system enhancements supporting awards management, fund monitoring and related business processes.
• Coordinate capacity-building initiatives and provide technical advice to headquarters, regional and country offices on fund monitoring and awards management matters under the purview of the Awards Management Unit.
• Ensure the timely completion of Awards Management Unit responsibilities related to interim and annual financial closing processes.
• Oversee the timely review, reconciliation and cleansing of assigned balance sheet, net assets and revenue General Ledger accounts.
• Prepare the budget to actual statement in the financial statements coordinating the work with IRMS; oversee the preparation and quality assurance of other select statements, notes, schedules and indicators assigned to the Awards Management Unit in the corporate financial statements, and other external and internal reports prepared as part of annual closing of accounts.
• Coordinate the Awards Management Unit's participation in internal and external audits, ensuring timely responses, implementation of audit recommendations and continuous strengthening of financial controls.
• Review and provide inputs to non-standard donor agreements to ensure compliance with UN-Women financial regulations, rules, policies and procedures, recommending practical solutions to donor requirements.
• Perform delegated approval functions in Quantum.
• Oversee timely and accurate processing of revenue-related transactions including identification and application of deposits, creation of revenue and billing events, issuance of receipts to donors, and related activities.
• Oversee the approval of new and modification of existing awards to ensure compliance with applicable financial policies, procedures and donor agreements.
• Oversee the timely and accurate processing of support costs, including the reconciliation of donor contributions with support costs recovered and the allocation of the appropriate share of support costs to headquarters units and country offices, in accordance with applicable policies and methodologies.
• Ensure revenue accounting results comply with IPSAS 47 through effective oversight of revenue recognition processes including the results generated by revenue and billing events.
• Supervise the review of contributions related to direct funding of Strategic Notes to ensure appropriate accounting treatment in accordance with IPSAS 47 and organizational policies.
• Oversee the completeness and accuracy of corporate records relating to signed contribution agreements and future contribution instalments by establishing effective monitoring and quality assurance procedures.
• Oversee the preparation of periodic management reports on contributions to support decision-making, statutory reporting and financial oversight.
• Develop and automate of financial reports, dashboards and performance indicators relating to contribution agreements signed, contributions received, future contribution installments due and other relevant information.
• Lead the day-to-day management of the Awards Management Unit, ensuring efficient, client-focused and high-quality service delivery.
• Develop the Unit workplan and establish priorities, service standards, key performance indicators and monitoring mechanisms.
• Manage staff performance, workload distribution, recruitment, coaching and mentoring.
• Foster a culture of excellence, collaboration, knowledge sharing, innovation and continuous improvement.
• Oversee the timely billing, charging and recovery of costs for global enabling services provided by the Awards Management Unit in accordance with corporate cost recovery policies.
• Contribute to the DFA risk register for areas under Awards Management Unit’s responsibility.
• Monitor operational and financial risks in awards and fund management, revenue and related reporting areas and ensure effective implementation of internal controls across all Unit functions.
• Assess and report to Chief, Financial Reporting, the effectiveness or weaknesses of internal controls in Awards Management Unit’s area of responsibilities, escalating significant weaknesses as appropriate.
• Drive continuous improvement of business processes, automation and service delivery, identifying opportunities to increase operational efficiency and achieve cost savings.
• Represent the Awards Management Unit in corporate initiatives, inter-divisional working groups and inter-agency forums relating to awards management, donor financial reporting and related issues, as required.
• Perform other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organisation.

Requirements

• Master’s Degree (or equivalent) in Finance/Accounting, or a Professional accounting qualification from an internationally recognized institute of accountancy (Chartered Accountant or Certified Public Accountant).
• Professionally qualified accountants from an internationally recognized institute of accountancy will have a distinct advantage.
• At least 7 years of extensive and progressively responsible experience in financial management, accounting, financial donor reporting or grants management in a large multi-national organization is required, at least 4 years of which should be at the supervisory level.
• Experience leading financial operations within a defined functional area, including establishing priorities, managing multiple concurrent workstreams, and delivering results within demanding deadlines, is required.
• Experience supervising teams, managing staff performance, allocating resources, and fostering collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement is required.
• Experience managing competing priorities and balancing operational service delivery with process improvements while maintaining high standards of quality, compliance, and client service is required.
• Experience developing, implementing and strengthening financial policies, internal controls, business processes and standard operating procedures is required.
• Experience in preparing and overseeing financial donor reporting for multi-donor programmes and projects within the United Nations system or another international organization is highly desirable.
• Experience managing revenue recognition, project financial closure and year-end financial reporting processes within the United Nations system is highly desirable.
• Experience working with financial ERP system/s (preferably Oracle Cloud) is required.
• Experience preparing IPSAS- or IFRS- compliant financial statements is highly desirable.
• Experience in the United Nations system and its organizations with a complex portfolio of voluntary funded contributions is an asset.
• Fluency in English is required.
• Knowledge of another official UN language is desirable (French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, or Spanish).

Skills

• Finance Management
• Accounting
• Financial Donor Reporting
• Grants Management
• Supervision Experience
• Performance Management
• Resource Allocation
• Process Improvement
• Financial Policies Development
• Internal Controls
• Business Process Management
• Standard Operating Procedures Implementation
• Revenue Recognition
• Project Operational and Financial Closure
• Year-End Financial Reporting
• ERP Systems
• Oracle Cloud
• IPSAS Financial Reporting
• IFRS Financial Reporting
• Financial Compliance
• Financial Automation

Languages

English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Spanish