View Vacancy - MNL - Regional Finance Senior Officer, A2 (L)

The British Government is an inclusive and diversity-friendly employer.  We value difference, promote equality and challenge discrimination, enhancing our organisational capability. We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. We do not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, colour, ethnicity, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, age, veteran status or other category protected by law. We promote family-friendly flexible working opportunities, where operational and security needs allow.
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Operations and Corporate Services)
GTPC (Global Transaction Processing Centre)

The British Embassy Manila is a large diplomatic mission (around 250 staff) delivering a dynamic and rapidly expanding programme of activity in support of the UK’s objectives on prosperity, security and consular matters. The Embassy is a modern, diverse and inclusive employer where everyone contributes to the Embassy’s CORE Values of Collaboration, Opportunity, Respect and Excellence.

Main purpose of job:

To support the operational delivery of the Global Transaction Processing Centre (GTPC) to Posts in Asia Pacific, MENAD, EECAD, SAAD and Africa providing reconciliation services to 141 posts, overseeing the accurate and timely processing of Network Post Accounts and receipts.

Provide a quality check function for the team, supporting a culture of continuous improvement to not only meet, but exceed the service standards set by the Service Level Agreement while working to improve financial compliance across the FCDO.

Roles and responsibilities: 

Purchase Order Supplier Maintenance

  • Process all SM, PO, DS transactions in your areas within Service levels agreements focusing on delivering 97% and above KPIs throughout the year.
  • Complete workload as identified in daily workload plan including Supplier & Staff set ups, Distribution Set ups, Bank Amendments, clean ups and Purchase Order creation and PO other requests.
  • Investigate any rejected payment reasons that may be related to supplier/staff set-up.

Accounts Payable – Invoice Processing

  • Process all supplier invoices, staff reimbursement in the system within service level agreements focusing on delivering 99% and above KPIs throughout the year.
  • Complete workload as identified in Workload management including recording of supplier invoices, staff reimbursements, debit memos, NPAs, cash-in-transit forms approved NDPRs and payroll-related.

Accounts Payable – Payments

  • Process all assigned payment transactions including Payroll, Debit Memos, NPAs and urgent payment requests within Service level agreements and in compliance to Standard processes and P2P guidelines. Any deviations from processes are appropriately escalated and monitored to reduce risk.
  • Identify any rejected payments promptly. Liaise with banking providers as well as internal teams to investigate and resolve payment rejections and refunds.
  • Comply with Banking Regulations and FCDO financial policies in particular P2P handbook, Challenge and Escalation procedures and Audit recommendations.
  • For manual banking payments perform 1st level bank approval. Ensure accuracy checks are completed, that details entered in PRISM match details on the banking platform.
  • For Electronic/cheque/Wire payments, perform quality check of batches before payment processing by reviewing validity and completeness of supporting documentations as well as checking accuracy of invoice entry details including matching of bank account information setup in Oracle and Banking platforms.
  • Ensure strict adherence to management and usage of banking tokens and access information.

Accounts Receivable & Reconciliation

  • Process all accounts receivable and reconciliation transactions in your areas within Service levels agreements.
  • Complete workload as identified in daily workload plan including receipts, NPAs, reconciliation, cash & bank balances and adjustments in the system.
  • Investigate and pursue the reconciliation of any aging items.
  • Investigate any rejected payment promptly registering it in the Bank Amendment Tracker.

Operational Delivery

  • Comply with financial guidance in particular P2P handbook, Challenge and Escalation procedures and audit recommendations.
  • Support Manager to assist with daily workload of team addressing bottlenecks and ensuring payments and requests are processed within SLAs while still maintaining acceptable accuracy level.
  • Provide assistance in resolving issues related to their respective area and process.
  • Monitor and ensure compliance to standard processes ensuring that any deviations from process are appropriately escalated and monitored to reduce risk.
  • Manage all data according to Information Management / GDPR guidance ensuring it is stored correctly, weeded regularly and shared according to personal data management controls.
  • Review all relevant monitoring tools to take action as necessary.
  • Timely ensure that all requests and queries in shared mailbox, and sharepoint are managed and resolved.
  • Timely escalation of unresolved aging items to line manager.
  • Perform other duties as requested by the Line Manager.

Quality Check

  • Quality check all relevant trackers to ensure the team are taking action daily. Raising directly with team member if action hasn’t been taken.
  • Run reports to sense check data entry to spot and correct data entry errors.
  • Investigate and action reports sent by Overseas Cash Management Team.

Coaching

  • Provide training and mentoring to new members of the team.
  • Perform as Subject Matter Expert on the reconciliation and receipts processes ensuring they are familiar and understand all necessary processes.

Customer Service

  • Identify issues and work to resolve. Escalate to line managers issues that need may affect current operations.
  • Work with Post staff to ensure proper delivery of services by answering queries and providing guidance / instructions to avoid errors in the future.
  • Act as first point of contact for the Customer Engagement Team ensuring responses are actioned within SLA.

Continuous Improvement

  • Timely report to line manager any incidents, identify corrective measures and suggest practical and repeatable solutions to prevent similar incidents occurring in the future.
  • Proactively identify and suggest improvements in payments processes to enhance efficiencies and quality of delivered results, paying particular attention to any failing KPIs.
  • Support a culture of continuous improvement by actively participating in internal and external cross-team process improvements projects as necessary.
  • Coordinate with other function teams on changes/issues to ensure seamless flow of data/information.

Learning and Development

  • Commit at least 5 days each year for job shadowing, rotations, attending meetings and training.
  • 1 year experience of working in the FCDO Global Transaction Processing Centre or fast-paced BPO/shared service
  • With excellent data entry experience
  • MS Excel to level 4 and other Microsoft applications such as MS Outlook
  • Understanding of Purchase to Pay (P2P)
  • Oracle experience
  • Six Sigma Yellow Belt
  • Previous Accounts Payable experience
  • Customer service background
  • Finance Qualification
16 March 2021
Administrative Officer (AO)
Fixed Term, Full-time, Temporary
36
3 months
Asia Pacific
Philippines
Manila
British Embassy
1
PHP
37,907
26 April 2021

The slot being advertised is for the Payments team and is meant to provide fixed-term/temporary cover for 3 months, with a possible extension of up to 6 months.

The British Embassy offers a competitive compensation package, 36-hour work week, guaranteed 13th and 14th month pay, 20 days paid annual leave (calculated on Pro-rata basis if joined after 1 January), extensive medical insurance, life insurance and access to a guaranteed 5 days of learning opportunities a year. 

No accommodation or relocation expenses are payable in connection with this position. You must have work authorisation for the Philippines in order to apply.

Employment offers are subject to successful clearance of pre-employment checks. Staff recruited locally by the British Embassy Manila is subject to Terms and Conditions of Service according to local Philippine employment law.

All applications must be received before 23:55 local time at the specified application deadline.

Incomplete application forms will not be taken into consideration, so please ensure you provide the information requested. We regret to advise that we will only be contacting short-listed candidates. Applicants called for an interview will be assessed on the core competencies listed above. 

Employees who are not liable to pay local income tax on their Mission salary may have their salaries reduced by the equivalent local income tax amount.

The successful candidate should be able to start as soon as possible subject to successful clearance of pre-employment/security checks.

Please be aware that you will only be able to apply to vacancies for Country Based Staff roles with the British Government through this official tal.net site (operated by Oleeo). Jobs may be advertised on third party websites, however our adverts will always link back to the official tal.net site. If you complete and send an application through any other site, we will not receive it.

This opportunity is closed to applications.