JOB DETAILS:

About the Role

• The Platform's finance function is at a critical stage of institutional development. Financial processes remain largely manual, system infrastructure is still evolving, compliance obligations require immediate remediation, and consolidated financial visibility across both entities is limited. This role exists to fix that — systematically, permanently, and with minimal supervision.
• The Accountant will take full ownership of strengthening and professionalising the finance function across both entities. This requires simultaneously: resolving the legacy or historical gaps and inefficiencies while defining the policies, accounting rules, financial controls, ledger structure, and tax treatment required for long-term institutional scalability. The supporting systems, SOP repository, document filing infrastructure, workflow design, and dashboards are established and maintained within this role.
• The successful candidate will be responsible for transitioning the Platform from fragmented and manually intensive financial processes to a modern, digitally integrated, audit-ready finance environment while ensuring day-to-day operational financial activities continue without disruption.
• This is not a maintenance role. It is a build-and-fix role operating within a fast-moving infrastructure and advisory platform where financial discipline directly affects operational credibility, partner confidence, compliance standing, and execution capability.
• If you require established systems and extensive oversight before you can work effectively, this role is unlikely to be a good fit. If, however, you are motivated by the challenge of building robust finance systems from the ground up — diagnosing weaknesses, resolving legacy compliance gaps, improving financial visibility, and institutional controls that prevent problems from recurring — this role offers an opportunity to shape the long-term operational backbone of a growing platform.

Core Responsibilities

1. Financial Diagnostic, Controls and Digital Transition

Objective:

• Transition the Platform from fragmented, manually intensive financial processes to a modern, scalable, digitally integrated and audit-ready finance function — beginning with a clear-eyed assessment of the current financial and operational position across both entities.
• Within the first fourteen days, undertake a comprehensive diagnostic review of the Platform's existing financial records, spreadsheets, historical transactions, invoicing records, outstanding obligations, and compliance status across both entities and present  management with a prioritised remediation and controls-strengthening roadmap.
• Define the finance policy, accounting procedures, and compliance requirements governing key financial and operational processes including expense approvals, petty cash management, procurement, client invoicing, receivables tracking, intercompany cost allocations, reimbursement workflows, and financial record management. The Accountant maintains the SOP repository and version control on the underlying documentation.
• Establish the accounting rules, financial controls, ledger structure, and tax settings required to operate on digital banking platforms, corporate mobile money structures, and automated transaction processing, including workflow design and system implementation.
• Build and maintain rolling 12-month cash flow forecasting models, operational budgeting tools, and multi-year financial projections to improve management visibility on liquidity requirements, operational expenditure, project development costs, advisory revenue cycles, and strategic funding needs.
• Assess and recommend appropriate accounting, bookkeeping, and financial management systems tailored to the operational realities of the Platform, ensuring the accounting rules, ledger structure, tax settings, and financial controls within those systems meet operational and audit requirements.
• Establish foundational financial controls, reporting structures, reconciliation processes, and documentation standards necessary to support future audits, investor engagement, lender due diligence, and institutional scalability.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Deliver a comprehensive financial diagnostic report to management — identifying key gaps, risks, outstanding obligations, and a prioritised remediation roadmap — within 14 days of commencement.
• Complete full migration to digital payment platforms within 30 days, with all transactions processed digitally thereafter.
• Present the first iteration of rolling 12-month financial projections within 30 days of commencement.
• Deliver the finance policy and accounting procedures covering all core financial processes within 60 days of commencement.
• Establish reliable and up-to-date financial record management and reconciliation processes capable of supporting accurate monthly reporting and future audit readiness.

2. Tax Remediation and Statutory Compliance

Objective:

• Resolve outstanding tax and statutory compliance exposures as an immediate priority while establishing the discipline required to maintain consistent, timely, and fully compliant statutory reporting across both entities on a sustained basis.
• Conduct an immediate comprehensive assessment of all outstanding tax, payroll, and statutory compliance obligations across both entities — including VAT, PAYE, NSSF, Withholding Tax (WHT), corporate income tax, local service tax, and any other applicable regulatory filings or payment obligations — and develop a structured remediation roadmap with clear priorities, timelines, and accountability measures.
• Engage proactively with the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), National Social Security Fund (NSSF), external auditors, and other relevant authorities or stakeholders as necessary to resolve outstanding compliance issues, regularise filings, negotiate payment arrangements where appropriate, and restore both entities to full compliance standing.
• Compute, verify, and process all payroll deductions, transaction taxes, statutory contributions, and tax-related reconciliations accurately and on time each month, ensuring that all required statutory returns and payments are submitted through relevant regulatory portals ahead of prescribed legal deadlines.
• Maintain complete, organised, and audit-ready records of all statutory filings, tax computations, acknowledgements, electronic receipts, correspondence, and supporting compliance documentation — submitted into the document repository.
• Continuously monitor tax and statutory developments affecting the Platform and advise management on emerging compliance risks, reporting obligations, or potential operational implications. Operate and maintain the statutory compliance calendar with deadline reminders.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Within the first 30 days, deliver a comprehensive statutory compliance diagnostic identifying all outstanding tax, payroll, and regulatory obligations, including their estimated exposure, status, associated risks, and a prioritised remediation plan.
• Achieve full current compliance across all material statutory obligations — including VAT, PAYE, NSSF, Withholding Tax (WHT), and other applicable filings — within 90 days of commencement.
• Ensure 100% of statutory returns, payroll filings, and mandatory submissions are filed accurately and on or before applicable legal deadlines from the third month onwards, maintaining a zero-penalty and zero-late-filing record.
• Maintain accurate and fully reconciled statutory records capable of supporting internal review, external audit processes, lender due diligence, and regulatory verification requirements.
• Achieve zero missed filings and zero penalties on a sustained basis, with all responses to URA, NSSF, and audit queries delivered within agreed timeframes.

3. Daily Financial Operations and Multi-Entity Ledger  Management

Objective:

• Maintain accurate, real-time, and audit-ready financial records across both entities through disciplined financial operations, rigorous record  management, and transparent intercompany cost allocation practices.
• Maintain the Platform's accounting records on a daily basis through timely and accurate posting of all invoices, vendor bills, petty cash transactions, payroll entries, expense claims, bank movements, and supporting journal entries, ensuring that no material transaction backlogs accumulate.
• Manage and maintain separate but coordinated financial records for both entities, including accurate tagging, categorisation, and allocation of shared operational expenses, overheads, and project-related costs through structured intercompany allocation methodologies and ledger controls.
• Reconcile bank accounts, mobile money wallets, petty cash balances, receivables, payables, and intercompany balances regularly to ensure financial accuracy, transparency, and immediate visibility of outstanding issues or anomalies.
• Initiate and process billing promptly upon confirmation of contractual milestones, deliverable triggers, project stages, or consultancy payment events in accordance with applicable agreements and commercial terms, ensuring timely revenue recognition and cash collection support.
• Drive accounts receivable — leading customer communication, collection strategy, and follow-up on outstanding invoices, and maintaining the AR dashboard (outstanding invoices, days overdue, follow-up status, escalation status).
• Enforce strict financial documentation and verification standards across all payment and reimbursement processes, including adherence to a "no receipt, no reimbursement" principle and mandatory matching of all payment requests to valid supporting invoices, approvals, and transaction records prior to disbursement.
• Ensure financial source documents are complete, accurate, and submitted into the platform document repository in a timely manner so that records remain audit-ready at all times.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Ensure 100% of routine daily financial transactions are accurately recorded in the Platform's accounting system by close of business each working day, with zero unresolved transaction backlogs at weekly internal reviews.
• Maintain a minimum 100% accuracy standard on ledger entries, reconciliations, and financial classifications during periodic internal reviews and audit checks.
• Issue all invoices within 24 hours of confirmation of contractual milestones, deliverable approvals, or billing triggers.
• Maintain fully reconciled bank, petty cash, and intercompany balances on an ongoing basis, with all material discrepancies identified and resolved promptly.
• Ensure all processed payments and reimbursements are fully supported by compliant documentation, approvals, and tax invoices prior to release of funds.

4. Liquidity Management and Financial Controls

Objective:

• Safeguard the Platform's liquidity position, strengthen financial control discipline, and ensure smooth day-to-day operational cash flow management across both entities.
• Conduct structured weekly reconciliations of all bank accounts, petty cash balances, mobile money wallets, and digital payment platforms, ensuring alignment between accounting records, supporting documentation, and actual cash positions, while promptly identifying and escalating any discrepancies or unusual transactions.
• Monitor daily liquidity positions across both entities, maintaining clear visibility on available cash balances, committed obligations, expected inflows, and upcoming payment requirements, and proactively escalating potential liquidity constraints or irregular financial movements to management.
• Support short-term cash flow planning and working capital management by maintaining updated payment schedules, receivables tracking, recurring obligations calendars, and projected operational funding requirements.
• Process approved vendor, consultant, operational, and statutory payments accurately and within required timelines, while ensuring that all disbursements comply with internal approval processes, documentation standards, and financial control requirements. Operate the approval workflow covering who requested, who approved, status, and escalation.
• Maintain accurate and auditable payment records across all disbursement channels, including bank transfers, digital payment systems, and mobile money transactions.
• Identify and help address operational inefficiencies, leakages, duplicate payments, unsupported expenditures, or weak control points that may negatively affect the Platform's liquidity position or financial discipline.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Complete and sign off 100% of weekly bank, petty cash, mobile money, and digital payment reconciliations before close of business every Friday.
• Ensure that no unresolved reconciliation variances, unsupported transactions, or unexplained balance discrepancies remain outstanding for more than forty-eight (48) hours without documented explanation and escalation.
• Process 100% of fully approved and verified vendor, consultant, and operational payments within two (2) business days of internal approval.
• Maintain accurate and up-to-date daily cash position visibility across both entities, with material liquidity risks escalated proactively to  management.
• Maintain clean, traceable, and audit-ready payment documentation supporting all disbursements and cash management activities across the Platform.

5.  Management Reporting and Financial Advisory

Objective: Provide leadership with accurate, timely, and decision-useful financial visibility across both entities, enabling informed strategic, operational, and commercial decision-making grounded in real financial performance rather than assumptions or incomplete information.

• Prepare and deliver a comprehensive monthly management reporting pack by the 10th of each month, including Profit & Loss Statements, Balance Sheets, Cash Flow Statements, budget-versus-actual variance analyses, aged receivables and payables summaries, and concise executive commentary highlighting key trends, risks, operational implications, and recommended management actions. (Visualisation and the underlying financial dashboard are — the Accountant owns the numbers.)
• Conduct structured monthly financial review and budget performance sessions with leadership, proactively identifying cost overruns, revenue gaps, liquidity pressures, operational inefficiencies, and emerging financial risks, while updating projections and assumptions based on evolving operational realities and pipeline developments.
• Maintain accurate accounting treatment of fixed assets, including acquisition records, depreciation schedules, disposal accounting, and periodic reconciliation against the platform asset inventory system.
• Support management with forward-looking financial analysis relating to project development activities, advisory mandates, pricing strategies, staffing decisions, operational expenditure planning, resource allocation, and strategic growth initiatives.
• Provide proactive financial insights and commercial input into project structuring discussions, proposal development, consultancy pricing, investment considerations, procurement decisions, and broader operational planning processes across the Platform.
• Function as a strategic finance partner to leadership by translating financial information into practical operational and commercial insights that improve planning, discipline, execution, and resource deployment.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Deliver complete monthly management reporting packs to leadership by the 10th of each month without exception.
• Conduct structured monthly budget-versus-actual review sessions with leadership, including documented analysis of key variances, risks, assumptions, and recommended corrective actions.
• Maintain accurate accounting treatment of fixed assets, verified through quarterly reconciliation exercises against the platform asset inventory system.
• Raise at least two (2) proactive financial risk alerts, operational efficiency recommendations, or cost optimisation proposals to leadership per quarter outside routine reporting cycles.
• Ensure management reporting outputs are accurate, internally consistent, audit-supportive, and capable of informing operational, strategic, and financing-related decision-making across both entities.

Person Specification

Education & Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in  Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, or a related field.
• Active progression toward or completion of CPA Uganda or ACCA is highly preferred.

Experience

• Minimum of 2 years of hands-on accounting experience, with demonstrable exposure to multi-entity structures, professional services environments, or early-stage organisations.
• Proven experience mana