New Vacancies in a Pan-African Solar Electricity Company – Lagos

We are a pan-African electricity company specializing in the generation of solar energy, with a focus on medium-scale solar systems (20 kWp to 2 MWp). Unlike many other international solar companies, we have built a strong local team of engineers and technicians offering a fully integrated solution from design, to installation and maintenance. Company is headquartered in Lagos Nigeria with a branch office in Accra Ghana.

We are recruiting to fill the positions below:

Job Title: Accounting Manager
Location: Lagos
Department: Finance
Reports to: Financial Controller
Manager of: Accounting Team
Key Performance Areas

• Performs professional accounting work, including auditing, analysing and verifying fiscal records and reports, preparing financial and statistical reports, providing information to staff regarding accounting practices and procedures, and reconciling general ledger accounts;
• Assists in preparing the company’s annual and mid-year budgets; prepares year-end audit reports and schedules
• Trains and provides technical advice to lower-level accounting personnel, and performs related work as required
• Ensure that all requests from employees are handled and delivered in record time

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the Accounting team in their day to day activities, including:
  • Organization of responsibilities
  • Establishing procedures and timelines
  • Quality control and assurance of work done
  • Line management responsibilities (absences, training, evaluations)
• Ensure proper organization, execution and control of:
  • Accounts Payable
  • Accounts Receivable
  • Cash and Bank transactions
  • Maintenance of Accounting Records
  • Period Closing
  • Group Consolidation and Intercompany Account Management
• Support the FC in the preparation for and management of External Audit procedures
• Provide on a timely basis period reporting schedules and materials as agreed with the FC
• Responsibility to challenge and understand the outputs of the Accounting team to ensure the reasonability and commercial sense of information produced, including:
  • Variance analysis
  • Application of business and activity knowledge to outputs
  • Engagement with operating departments to clarify and build understanding.
• As agreed by the FC, formal signature responsibilities both internal (in accordance with Group delegated authorities) and external (e.g. banks, vendor relationships).

Routine Tasks:

• Prepare, examine, and analyse accounting records, financial statements, and other financial reports to assess accuracy, completeness, and conformance to reporting and procedural standards.
• Prepares journal entries and reconciles general ledger and subsidiary accounts; prepares monthly financial statements, including distributing monthly revenue and expenditure reports to departments.
• Ensure all company’s financial transactions are captured accurately and timely, manually and within the electronic accounting systems. Maintain an efficient filing and document retrieval system of all accounting books and ledgers.
• Analyses and reconciles expenditure and revenue accounts, including investment reports.
• Calculates and prepares reimbursement billings and tracks receivables; reconciles monthly accounts receivable.
• Support the CFO and the FC to develop, maintain, and analyse budgets; prepare periodic reports that compare budgeted costs to actual performance and highlight issues for Management attention.
• Assist with audit schedules for external auditors
• Prepare monthly management accounts as directed by the FC including but not limited to – profit and loss account, balance sheet, bank reconciliation statements and receivables and payables ageing analyses
• Appraise, evaluate, and maintain accurate and comprehensive inventory of all company’s assets, recording information such as the property’s description, value, and location.
• Reviewing and verifying accuracy of data;
• Assist with preparation and filing of annual financial statements
• Prepare invoices for all projects and monthly customer statements
• Assists with the preparation of the annual and mid-year budgets.
• Assists with the fiscal year-end and fixed asset accounting.
• Provide the necessary support to auditors and other statutory examiners
• Performs other duties of a similar nature or level.

Experience and Skills Required

• University Degree in Accounting or Finance. A qualified Chartered Accountant with minimum of 4 years work experience in a similar position with an Audit firm or reputable organization.
• Knowledge of contracting, negotiating, and change management. Knowledge of federal and state financial regulations.
• Knowledge of finance, accounting, budgeting, and cost control principles including International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS).
• Must be able to work effectively with all levels of employees, including top, middle and supervisory levels of management.
• Must be able to exercise discretion and good judgment, with an ability to understand the effect of decisions overall in the company.
• Ability to analyse financial data and prepare financial reports, statements, and projections.
• Requires advanced verbal and written communications skills in English, in addition to effective interpersonal skills.
• Knowledge of Accounting soft-wares and advance use of MS Excel.
• Ability to communicate effectively with co-workers, vendors and clients.

Job Title: Accountant
Location: Lagos
Department: Finance
Reports to: Accounting Manager
Key Responsibilities

• Preparation and processing of accounting records as instructed by the Accounting Manager
• Responsibility to understand Group policies and procedures relevant to each task and ensure that they are properly applied to the work assigned
• Ensures all Companies Requisition vouchers are typed and properly filed after payments have been made. Filing of day to day documents for easy retrievals
• Provide the necessary support to entire Finance team, external auditors and other statutory examiners. Reviewing and verifying accuracy of data.
• Responsibility to escalate promptly questions and issues relating to work required and materials processed. Assist with the filing of annual financial statements
• Update daily cashbook and handle daily requested and petty cash disbursements, imprest for the office. Prepare invoices for all projects and monthly customer statements.
• Assists with the preparation of the annual and mid-year budgets.
• Prepare reconciliation of payments to clients when necessary.
• Be in charge of lodgement of cheques to appropriate banks
• Performs other duties of a similar nature or level.
• All other duties as assigned.

Experience and Skills Required

• First degree in Accounting from a university with a minimum of 1-year experience with knowledge of accounting, finance, statistics, arithmetic and their application
• Ability to communicate effectively with co-workers, vendors and clients
• Familiar with using Accounting Software and strong MS – Excel skills
• Must be well-organized and process-oriented with eyes for details
• A good team player and excellent with working with set deadlines
• Not shy to ask questions and quick to raise issues if any arise
• Flexible and curious, keen to learn

Key Performance Areas

• Assist the CFO and the Accounting Manager to performs professional accounting work and providing information to staff regarding accounting practices and procedures, and reconciling general ledger accounts;
• Ensure that all requests from employees are handled and delivered in record time.

Job Title: Commercial Analyst
Location: Lagos
Department: Commercial Finance
Reports to: Group CFO
Key Responsibilities
Budget and Forecasting Process:

• Work with the CFO to deliver:
• A forecasting and budget framework including timetable, templates and tools, RACI
• Relevant and regularly updated Parameters & Assumptions
• Outputs, including Board presentations
• Work with Heads of Department to deliver:
• Timely submissions
• Consistent and coherent forecast/budget inputs/outputs
• Includes monthly/bi-weekly cash flow forecasting, annual budgets, 5-year plan and periodic reforecasting.

Management Reporting, working with the CFO to design, coordinate, deliver and continually develop:

• Board reporting
• Monthly Senior Management Reporting
• Key KPIs and Operational Reporting
• Departmental Reporting
• Performance Analysis, work with the CFO to design and deliver:
• Profitability analysis
• Variance analysis
• Support, with the CEO and CFO, the fundraising process through the provision of financial and business modeling and preparation of deal analysis and due diligence materials
• Work with Business Development to ensure the “Four eyes” principle on cost sheets and help develop the cost sheets
• Support the CFO in the development of information flows and key processes of internal control and decision-support as requested
• Other Ad hoc roles in support of better visibility, insight and decision-making within the business.

Experience and Skills Required

• Bachelor’s Degree and/or equivalent experience in Business / Operations Management, Engineering, Computer Science or other quantitatively inclined course of study
• A minimum of 2 to 3 years of professional experience in roles such as business/operations/financial analyst, business manager, or project consultant
• Proven business analysis skills including proficiency in excel and other MS office applications, writing business plans from scratch without assistance, basic financial modelling, and drafting of proposals and presentations to senior management
• Comfortable fulfilling designated role within a team environment while applying self-directed work activity
• Must be able to work effectively with all levels of employees, including top, middle and supervisory levels of management.
• Requires advanced verbal and written communications skills in English, in addition to effective interpersonal skills.
• Comfortable in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment, with changing priorities and demands
• Attention to detail to ensure data accuracy critical to building stakeholder credibility.
• Must have the capacity to multi-task and be organized to manage multiple deadlines from multiple people on a daily basis
• Demonstrated experience documenting use cases and functional requirements
• Ability to present complex concepts in a clear and straight forward manner
• Excellent analytical and problem solving skills
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills
• Strong presentation skills

Will suit a candidate who is:

• Well-organized and able to organize others, not task by task, but process by process. This is about empowerment not micromanagement
• Persistent, but Courteous
• Charming, but Firm
• Curious, Unafraid, but knows when to ask for help
• Numerate, and also able to write clearly and present well
• Good at taking responsibility for delivering a project on time (and actually doing it!)
• Strong communication skills with a gift for explaining the “Why” of things, not only the “What”
• Able to multi-task and identify priorities in a fast-moving environment

Additional Information

• This is a great training role with a lot of exposure to different areas of the business and the senior management team.
• Our picture for this candidate is someone who is not a “traditional” accountant (or even an accountant at all).
• This is an analytical role and requires multi-tasking, a high level of curiosity, and a desire to really bottom out issues and figure out how to reflect and resolve them through a mixture of numerical and human solutions.
• The role works mainly with non-accountants and requires good communications skills, enthusiasm, patience with others, and impatience with inefficiency and delay.
• This person is a “smart doer”, who engages when and where needed to help good decisions be made and effective actions executed in replicable and impartial ways.
• As this role requires a wide understanding and involvement with the business, the person must be genuinely interested in helping us bring solar power to West Africa.
• As no 2 days will be the same, the person must be ready to put their strong organizational and technical skills to work in a fast-moving business.
• Someone who wants to grow and be challenged in a friendly, successful environment that demands your best – and rewards you with seeing your impact in real time every day.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should send their updated CV (in MS-Word or Adobe PDF format only) to: Kehinde@saphiredegrees.com using the Job Title as the subject of the mail

Application Deadline 30th October, 2019.