Bilingual Accountant At CARE USA

Job Summary:

Language is often the major barrier to communicating and the Shared Services Center (SSC) has been challenged to address language concerns in both the French and Spanish speaking regions of CARE. The “traditional” way of using online translation is becoming ineffective since languages have cultural nuances which online translation applications cannot handle. Translators have also become expensive and are no longer economically viable. While English may be considered as the main language for CARE, there is a pressing need to provide bilingual support in both West Africa and Latin America.

In order to address the language barrier, it was decided to set up one SSC satellite each at the WA region and the LAC region. The SSC satellite will have a lean complement of 2 resources for which the pricipal consideration for hiring is fluency in oral and written communication skills in French / Spanish as applicable for the region. English will be a secondary requirement. These bilingual resources will serve as intermediaries for the country offces / RMUs and the Shared Services Center in Manila and HQ in Atlanta. The resources will be based in one of the country office in West Africa / Latin America as appropriate and will be paid as local / national staff and will also enjoy benefits following the labor laws of their home country. The reporting line of these resources will be to the SSC Regional Manager supporting WA / LAC.

Additionally, the resources must have basic knowledge in the various Financial Control processes (monthly closing activities, bank reconciliation, accounts payable just to name a few), a solid understanding of polices and procedures and mitigating risks. The resources need to have fundamentals on audit procedures.

Responsibilities:

1. Language intermediary for the country offices / RMU and the Shared Services in Manila
   • Facilitate the day-to-day finance and accounting transactions between Country Offices (CO) in the region and SSC serving as interpreter when needed. This includes vendor payment requests (Global AP), cash transfers, cash receipts and other journal entries (e.g., payroll, accruals, cost allocation).
   • Translate / interpret primary documents needed to process transactions critical to all Financial Control processes and activities
   • Attend meetings to translate discussions and training sessions.
2. Financial Close Activities and Audit
   • Support and facilitate the monthly, quarterly and year end close activities in xx CO in the region.
   • Support CO operations such as procurement, accounts payable, commitment accounting, cash management, vendor set up an straight through processing.
   • Provide guidance to resolve issues (e. g. erroneous transactions recorded in PeopleSoft) and seek the help of the SSC Manila Financial Control to do the analysis and adjustments in the system.
   • Ensure the integrity of accounting information and reconcile any financial discrepancies by performing or directing research of accounting issues for compliance, and establish quality over transactions and reporting.
   • Support the business units in completing their local statutory and donor audits.
   • Monitor and facilitate getting the requested information from business units during financial statement and UG audit.
3. Maintaining Award, Sub-award, BAB, and DAB Information in PeopleSoft
   • Facilitate the quality review of information between xx CO to SSC related to award and sub award data maintenance, and budget data – Board Approved Budget (BAB) and Donor Approved Budget (DAB) in PeopleSoft.
   • Ensure that FCs and PIDs for new awards are issued timely and with correct information in PS — PIDs are correctly assigned to sub-award agreements; sub-award information in PS are complete and accurate; modifications in awards and sub-awards are correctly and timely updated in PS; BAB and DAB are updated properly and timely in PS and with the correct activity IDs; milestone tracker in PS is updated with correct and complete information for all awards and sub-awards; and close out of awards is done timely and properly.
   • Liaise with business units of critical tasks and timelines related to submission of donor reports, revision of DAB, and award close-out.
4. Financial and award analysis and review and other relevant reports
   • Participate in the review and analysis the financial reports and the CO understanding of these reports.
   • Ensure that FAAR reports have complete and relevant information and schedules; and are provided timely to relevant stakeholders such as the Country Directors, Finance Directors, RMU, AMS.
   • To support on discussion and identifying required actions to resolve the issues from FAAR reports.
   • Review the COMFORT reports to understand the issues flagged in such reports and whether such issues impact the integrity of transactions in PS.
5. Audit Support
   • Participate in the data collection for audits and provide support to both internal and external auditors as needed.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or Business Administration with emphasis in Accounting.
• Fluency French / Spanish language as applicable with English as a secondary language.
• One to two years of relevant experience in finance and accounting is required but fresh graduates are welcome.
• Personal integrity, ability to keep customer (donor) and company confidences.