Budget Officer United Nations Children's Fund Experience: 0 to 3 Years Panama City, Panama Apply By: 18-02-2025

Join our Haiti team to be responsible for tracking, analyzing and reporting income and expenditures, including donor contributions and will be accountable for analyzing the needs, preparation, management and monitoring of contributions, involving all sources of funds across programmes and operations, contributing to the overall governance of the office. You will also collaborate with HQ, RO and CO and contribute to the overall strategies related to contribution and budget management and reporting and capacity building for UNICEF Haiti Country Office while outposted in Panama.

Below are the key functions, accountabilities and related duties tasks:

Support the formulation of strategies and concepts:

• Align contribution management with programme strategies and develop medium to long-term plans for effective budget management contributing to the overall governance of the office
• Develop capacity building plans for strengthening the overall budget management of the office
• Develop and revise the CO office budget, contribution and financial strategies with programme’s vision and staffing structure ensuring it is coherent and meaningful

Support Budget analysis focusing on achieving results:

• Integrate and analyze potentially conflicting numerical, verbal and other data from a wide variety of sources.
• Identify key, high-level trends across data sets.
• Recognize subtle inter-relationships among multiple issues and see the potential effects on the overall system or process.
• Make logical, rational, well-reasoned and defensible judgment from the analyses
• Liaise with RO/HQ and technical colleagues to dialogue and constantly inform the CO on policies and guidelines on budget management

Contribution management (budget planning allocation, monitoring):

• Participate in the development of the budget-related components of the office work plan, annual management plan, Resource mobilization and Partnership Strategy, including donor proposals.
• Monitor compliance and inform relevant sections to ensure that fund management objectives and targets are on track, and that staff are aware of donor conditions.
• Ensure timely allocation of new grants to respective programmes in line with approved budget breakdown and donor conditions
• Monitor grants expiry dates and in dialogue with the programmes find solutions for proper utilization aligned with results,
• Monitor the utilization of regular Resources and Other Resources and produce regular updates for the Country Office Management.
• Support the capacity development of programme staff to improve the description of expenditures that appear in financial reports
• Retrieve information on costs of programme elements, such as staff and related costs from automated files and comply them in standardized and customized reports.
• Enable an institutional memory within the office through development and maintenance of record keeping of OR allocations forms and emails related to RR allocation.
• Collect and analyze budget and financial data for programme/project planning, management, monitoring and evaluation purposes.
• Review the accuracy of VISION/SAP generated data.

Management of financial dashboard reports:

• Monitor allocation and expenditures trends; generate, prepare and share with members of the management team the financial progress reports adapted from VISION and bring to the attention of the Programme & Planning Specialist any deviations or delays for corrective measures.
• Prepare and timely submit monthly Management Indicator reports to the meetings of management team, including analysis on key programme indicators
• Follow-up on agreed action during presentation of management reports
• Provide reports on budget utilization during reviews (Mid-year, annual and mid-term reviews).
• Support technical / programme sections and coordinate with the Program Specialist and Deputy Representative in the planning and forecasting of budget needs and maintain a cross-sectoral budget allocation and tracking tool to ensure that sufficient funds from the appropriate sources (and in line with donor conditions) are allocated to ensure proper and timely implementation of programmatic activities.
• Monitor commitments and expenditures to ensure timely, accurate and appropriate grant information is provided on programme budget, allocations, commitments, expenditures and projections and with the aim to ensure delays, errors and discrepancies are detected and corrected.
• Support in ensuring that funds are only used for the purposes agreed and in line with project proposals and donor conditions, including by tracking support for cross-cutting programs and operations. Keep office senior management, program specialist, budget owners and section chiefs informed on DCT status and utilization rates and make recommendations for corrective action as required.

Management of financial reports related to resource mobilization and donor reporting:

• Support the preparation and review of financial reports to donors to ensure alignment with VISION reports and adherence to donor templates and guidelines.
• Prepare financial reports related to contributions in close coordination with the related programmes.
• Support the preparation and review of budgets in donor funding proposals in line with UNICEF financial rules and regulations.
• Support the preparation of budget related documentation and analysis as related to the fundraising function including income analysis and fundraising gaps.

VISION support to fund management:

• Provide support to Programme and Operation on the appropriate VISION work processes, routine operation and utilization of the system and PIDB codes.
• Diagnose problems and locally resolve/respond to queries that users encounter or liaise with the NYHQ including the global helpdesk for solutions.
• Building the capacity on budget management including training on VISION and insight.
• Process requests for grants extension ahead of expiring dates in VISION.
• Maintain updated VISION records for budget allotments, planning ceilings, donor contributions and related correspondence.
• Provide support to Programmes through preparation of monitoring reports (donor utilization reports, all routine management reports produced by VISION, non-routine reports and presentations), review and analyse reports and recommend actions to be taken to maximize the efficiency of the office’s fund utilization.
• Assist office senior management and programme staff in allocation and reallocation of funds. Conduct regular review and reconciliation of Grants; provide analysis by using the management indicators. Ensure that contributions are fully utilized and in a timely manner.
• Together with the Monitoring and Reporting Specialist and other relevant staff, ensure that required donor budget reports are clear, concise, on time and with accurate financial figures.

Cost distribution and payroll:

• support and advise budget owners on conditions of Grants utilization in payroll.
• Support staff payroll run by ensuring that adequate funds are allocated for staff salary and cost distribution uploaded for all staff on FT and TA.
• Maintain an analysis for the payroll and related gaps. payroll.

To qualify as a champion for every child you will have…

Minimum requirements:

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, Finance and Accounting, General administration, Development studies, Statistics, Social Sciences, or any other relevant field of discipline.

Work Experience:

• Minimum two years of relevant professional work experience in Programme management and budgeting.
• Work experience in international organization in the relevant area is an asset.
• Work experience on EU financial reporting is considered an asset.
• Experience in the usage of office software MS package and advanced knowledge of spreadsheet and database packages.

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in French and good working knowledge of English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, Russian or Spanish) is an asset.

Source: https://jobs.unicef.org/cw/en-us/job/579932