Senior Accountant, M-PESA Finance

We are seeking a Senior Accountant to join our M-PESA Finance team at Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia PLC. The role focuses on accurate financial reporting and reconciliation, ensuring compliance with accounting standards.

Responsibilities

• At Safaricom Ethiopia, we are a purpose-led technology company dedicated to transforming lives through digital connectivity and inclusive financial services. In under four years, we have grown to serve over 10 million customers, with our network now reaching 55% of Ethiopia’s population – a testament to our bold vision and trusted partnerships.
• Guided by core values such as customer obsession, innovation, integrity, and get it done together, we are building a workplace that is dynamic, inclusive, and empowering. We believe our greatest strength lies in our people. That’s why, for two consecutive years, we have proudly get earned the Top Employer Award – in recognition for our unwavering commitment to fostering a supportive, innovative, and inclusive environment to people.
• Join Safaricom Ethiopia and be part of a team that is shaping the digital future of Ethiopia. Here, your work has meaning, your voice matters, and your growth is our priority. Together, we are transforming lives for a digital future.
• The M-PESA Operations specialist will be responsible for leading and managing activities in support of Mobile Money daily operations. The role is charged with operational excellence to ensure superior end to end support for both internal and external stakeholders by adequately empowering them to utilize and/or provide support for Mobile Money services. The specialist will ensure conformity to business and regulatory requirements during operations.

Role purpose: The role holder will be responsible for ensuring that journal entries, reconciliations and reports into the General Ledger are accurate and complete. They will also ensure complete monthly overhead and Network Opex schedules and monthly Payroll reconciliation to the General Ledger

Responsibilities

• Ensure transactions at subsidiary ledger level are updated to the General ledger daily.
• Ensure subsidiary ledger balances are reconciled to the general ledger control accounts at least monthly. All issues must be resolved
• Maintain accounting periods open and close at the right time and ensure that no transactions are made to incorrect accounting period.
• Process any journals required by the general ledger and institute the discipline of processing at least 99% of transactions through subsidiary ledgers
• Minimize and justify number of journals posted direct into the general ledger to avoid lack of support by the subsidiary ledger
• Extract monthly financial statements (Trial Balance, Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet) in accordance with Vodafone specifications with supporting schedules
• Prepared costs center reports for reporting in the Hyperion by the 5th working day
• Ensure coding (cost codes) raised by departmental Personal Assistants at the time of requisition is correct.
• Prepare overheads and trend analysis to ensure any unusual movements from month to month are identified and proper explanations provided while initiating the process of collating expenses and overheads driving factors which could guide in ensuring completeness and accuracy of monthly costing e.g. links in use for interconnect expense, network OPEX, contracts in place for it support expenses, contractors in place for secondee and contractors expenses etc.
• Supervise and ensure monthly reconciliation of the various payroll expenses to the various payroll GL expense accounts through Rewards section in HR and filing of the same
• Ensure timely reconciliation of all M-PESA vendor payments
• Prepare monthly reconciliations that are accurate and complete for all vendors with balances above ETB 500,000
• Perform weekly invoice validation and maintain effective supplier communication to resolve issues promptly.
• Ensure zero manual invoice postings by maintaining accuracy and automation in invoice processing.
• Ensure timely funding of all approved internal tills in line with approved budgets to prevent any transaction failures resulting from low balances.
• Monitor M-PESA supplier till balances weekly and initiate replenishments as required.
• Support accurate cash flow forecasting related to vendor payments and M-PESA transactions.
• Ensure timely and accurate M-PESA Withholding Tax (WHT) declaration
• Ensure timely and accurate M-PESA VAT declaration
• Reconcile tax accounts monthly and ensure all statutory obligations are met within the deadlines.
• Prepare monthly Accounts Payable reports, including aging analysis, exception reports, and payment forecasts.
• Support month-end and year-end closing activities related to payables. Core
• Competencies, knowledge and experience:

Business Competencies

Working with Others

• Consciously takes steps to make the most of every conversation/interaction
• Identifies people’s needs, interests and motives to be able to influence the decisions they make
• Communicates simply to excite and engage people
• Pro-actively adapts own style and approach to build rapport, and work with others more effectively
• Build and maintains strong relationships and networks

Operational Excellence

• Targets effort and resources on high-value, high impact activity
• Focuses on achieving maximum performance and continuous improvement
• Thinks about processes and problems cross-functionally and end-to-end
• Use knowledge of products, technology, processes, systems and policy to solve problems

Creativity and Innovation

• Finds creative ways to exploit opportunities and solve problems
• Take risks and push what is possible
• Experiments with unorthodox approaches

Business Know-how

• Uses data and research to make decisions that are competitively and financially robust
• Balances current and future needs
• Thinks and acts like an owner of the business
• Acts in line with legal, regulatory, professional and ethical standards

Working with Change

• Responds flexibly to changing situations
• Manages the business and people aspects of change to drive performance

Project and Program Management

• Defines scope and deliverables in terms of time, cost, quality and business benefit
• Schedules activity and identifies resource needs, dependencies and synergies
• Evaluates progress, mitigates risks and addresses issues

Functional Competencies:

Planning and Control

• Analyses performance trends to determine the health of the business
• Steers business performance by using strategy and external data to help set goals
• Translates strategies into actionable plans that add value via process and operational improvements
• Maintains controls within Financial Systems through setup control and master data management

Accounting

• Prepares, analyses and summarizes financial data to support business operations and delivery statutory information
• Ensures the integrity of processes and systems to record and authorise transactions in compliance with The Company accounting policies and regulation

Reporting

• Delivering timely and accurate reports to satisfy statutory and business requirements
• Identifies key performance and variances, and provides recommendations

Treasury

Develops and advice on funding strategies for the business

Tax

• Apply appropriate treasury processes to maintain financial liquidity
• Delivers filings/reports to satisfy statutory and business requirements Combines expertise and commercial awareness to deliver value-added solutions

Key performance indicators:

• Monitor and ensure completion of all Profit and loss schedules by 2nd working day of the month with analysis per schedule and relevant comments on the month-on-month movement.
• Accurate reconciliation between all accounts’ movements in the subledgers ledger with a clean trail of supporting documentation.
• Monitor and ensure completion of all balance sheet schedules by 3rd working day of the month
• Nil transactions processed through the general ledger for stock transactions
• Ensure submission of accurate daily movement reports in stock ledger, synchronizing purchase ledger and sales ledger movements.
• Manage the trial balance, ensuring all modules are supported by subledgers
• Liaise with both internal and external auditors

Qualifications

• Qualified Accountant with CPA (K)/ACCA/CIMA/ACA with an honors degree from a recognized university.
• 2-3 years’ accounting experience in an international company or international audit firm
• At least 2 years at a supervisory level

Skills Required:

• Accounting / Finance