Accountant: Programmes & Agencies

a) Financial Acumen

• Possesses sufficient expertise to establish and manage income and expenditure monitoring systems for their own area of the business.
• Understands cost/revenue drivers within own area and can take actions to control resources and expenditure to meet financial targets.
• Understands basic management accounting reports and the processes by which financial resources are identified, obtained, allocated, managed, and accounted for.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to articulate technical accounting positions clearly to both finance and non-finance audiences.

b) Financial Accounting

• Thorough understanding of relevant accounting principles for DBSA and ability to guide others in their application.
• Implements controls for and monitors accounting transactions to ensure legal/regulatory compliance, and accuracy and timeliness of accounting information.
• Ability to apply credit/collection concepts independently, and able to adapt or develop new procedures as needed within DBSA and
  professional guidelines.
• Identifies bottlenecks and areas for improvement within the organisation’s Financial Services with respect to efficiency and accuracy of the existing financial systems and processes.

c) Stakeholder Management

• The skills, knowledge, and abilities required to establish, maintain, and enhance effective collaborative relationships between an organisation and its internal or external partners. This is essential for driving strategic alignment, fostering innovation, and achieving mutual goals through synergistic partnerships.

d) Financial Analysis

• Interprets, analyzes and/or evaluates compliance with applicable legislation, sound regulatory practices and procedures, generally accepted accounting principles, and other such rules and regulations.
• Analyses or interprets financial records and develops program procedures, financial models and databases.
• Demonstrates a thorough knowledge and understanding of applicable regulations, rules, entity/company practices, concepts, and industry issues.
• Demonstrates a thorough knowledge or experience working with legal and regulatory issues in their subject area.
• Develops and maintains effective working relationships with regulated industries, government officials, administrators, and civic leaders.

e) Costing and Budgeting

• Sets, maintains and updates the budgeting control process/methodologies.
• Reviews and monitors budget to ensure that the required financial procedures are adhered to and all monies are accounted for.
• Able to verify that monthly close procedures have been followed and identify anomalies.
• Significant experience in the analysis of variance reports to identify underlying operational trends.
• Can collate budget inputs from across the organisation and analyse bids to determine consistency with DBSA overall cost/revenue targets.
• Able to prepare company-wide budget reports and manuals.
• Develops options and recommendations for budget targets.

Minimum Qualification

• A Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting or a related discipline.
• Completion of auditing articles at an audit or TOPP (training outside public practice) firm.

Minimum Experience

• A minimum of 5 years’ experience in financial accounting in a complex organisation with the built environment, working on programme development or a large to medium complex organisation with multidimensional businesses.
• Working experience in taxation computations and SARS e-filing submissions (value-added tax and PAYE).
• Experience in working with financial management systems, e.g. SAP.
• Strong understanding of and a strong commitment to good corporate governance and specifically international reporting standards, including IFRS, Basel, GAAP and other regulatory requirements, including the PFMA.
• Excellent accounting and reconciliation skills.
• Experience in a corporate, public sector, or audit environment.
• Strong knowledge of IFRS and South African tax laws.

Desirable Requirements

• A Postgraduate qualification in Accounting.
• Strong advanced Microsoft Excel modelling skills.
• Knowledge of SAP FICO and BI.
• Experience in fund accounting, restricted fund management, or development finance environments.

*The KPA’s, competencies and relationships listed in this document are not exhaustive, and the incumbent will be expected to undertake additional duties within their capacity to meet the needs of business and/or the business unit.*

Customer Service Orientation

• Tries to understand the underlying needs of customers and matches these needs to available or customised products and services.
• Adapts processes and procedures to meet ongoing customer needs.
• Utilises the feedback received by customers to develop new and/or improve existing services/products that relate to their ongoing needs.
• Thinks of new ways to align DBSA’s offerings with future customer needs.
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in a multi-stakeholder environment without direct authority over those stakeholders.

b) Self-awareness and Self Control

• Withholds effects of strong emotions in difficult situations.
• Keeps functioning or responds constructively despite stress.
• May apply special techniques or a plan of time to manage emotions or stress.

c) Strategic and Innovative Thinking

• Experiments with new approaches, tests scenarios, questions assumptions, and challenges conventional thinking.
• Creates new concepts that are not obvious to others, leveraging internal and external sources of information, to build incremental revenue and growth opportunities.

d) Driving Delivery of Results

• Sets challenging goals that will have a significant impact on the business or support the organisational strategy.
• Commits significant resources and/or time to ensure that challenging goals are achieved, while also taking action to mitigate risk.

e) Teamwork & Cooperation

• Acts to promote a friendly climate and good morale, and resolves conflicts.
• Creates opportunities for cross-functional working.
• Encourages others to network outside of their own team/department and learn from their experience.