The Royal Institute of International Affairs is an independent policy institute based in London. Our mission is to help improve international relations in pursuit of a secure, prosperous, and just world.

After years of rapid growth, we need to consolidate and simplify our internal organisation and take a clear, strategic look at our priorities and the balance between costs and income (which includes donations, grants and memberships) and modernise our financial systems and business processes.

We seek an enterprising and adaptable Finance Officer to support our Finance team during the implementation of a new finance system and beyond. This role will be integral to the team's success as they navigate testing, training, design workshops, and vendor assessments. You will play a key role in providing systems support, as well as supporting core finance processes such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, and bank transaction management.

We are an equal opportunity employer; we value diversity and do not discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics. We encourage applications from all backgrounds. If there is anything we can do to improve your experience or support you, please get in touch at HR@Chathamhouse.org.

Principal Responsibilities

Delivery

Accounts Payables

• Manage payables invoices on SAP Concur, including the posting. This acts as an integration between Concur and the finance system.
• Create weekly payment runs and ensuring they are appropriately reviewed and paid on time. Occasional urgent payments will need to be processed.
• Create non-GBP payment batches to be processed through Western Union Global Pay or the Chatham House Euro and USD bank accounts for payments in Euro and USD.
• Proactively resolve queries from Western Union on non-GBP payments.
• Communicate with the staff on the progress of payments in non-GBP currencies either via Western Union Global pay or the foreign currency bank accounts of Chatham House.
• Banking, and occasional ordering of, and accounting for, cash used for non-UK travel.
• Ensure that all direct debit accounts are up to date, all payments are matched with invoices and all direct debit related invoices are recorded in time.
• Reconciliations of supplier statements.

Staff Expenses

• Ensure monthly processing of staff expenses into the system.
• Review the coding, adequate supporting evidence for staff expenses and query if they are incomplete.
• Review the outstanding staff expenses for completion of records.

Credit card transactions:

• Process monthly credit card spending and keep a record of this in the finance system.
• Review the adequacy of supporting evidence and receipts for each submission and work with the credit card holders to ensure the supporting evidence is provided.
• Work on the monthly accrual of credit card transactions with the Senior Finance Business Partner.

Aged creditors administration

• Regularly generate an aged creditors’ report from the system and analyse the reasons behind the delay in settling the balances.
• Reconcile the aged creditors' balance to the control account and raise to the Head of Finance if there are any discrepancies.

Reconciliations and special projects

• Support with reconciliations and analysis of key balances and accounts as required.
• Assist with special projects, such as the annual IRS return, corporation tax returns, income and funding analyses, financial reports, and any other ad-hoc work.
• Entries on the bank statement are analysed and posted.

People

• Be the first contact to support CH staff with expense claims, invoices and the whole purchase to pay process flow.
• Supporting the wider finance team with ad-hoc tasks to efficiently manage workload during the migration to a new accounting system.
• Ensuring good customer service is always provided through answering queries from suppliers, consultants and other programmes/departments in a timely and professional manner.
• Contribute to the delivery of the Chatham House EDI strategy

Person Specification 

Essential skills and experience 

• Experience working within a busy finance team.
• An open-minded and flexible quick learner who can quickly adapt to new situations and has delivered excellent work on a short-term contract.
• A proactive, self-motivating approach to work, with a collegiate, collaborative and consistent approach.
• Strong interpersonal skills and comfortable communicating in person, in writing, and over the telephone with individuals and with both financial and non-financial colleagues.
• Attention to detail.
• Able to work accurately and continuously maintain high standards.
• Intermediate Excel skills.

Desirable

• Accountancy training.
• Previous experience of working with Microsoft Dynamics GP, and SAP Concur, particularly the Invoices module.
• Advanced Excel skills.
• Previous experience of working within the charity sector.

Benefits 

Benefits include approximately 37 days annual leave (including public holidays and Chatham House closure days), pension salary exchange, employee assistance programme, parental leave, flexible working and other benefits designed to suit your lifestyle. All of this, in a professional, engaging and intellectually stimulating environment.

Salary: £36,000 per year.

Contract: Full-time, Permanent.

Location: St James's Square, London. Chatham House operates a hybrid working environment with team members expected to attend our stunning building typically two days a week.

Closing Date: Due to the urgency of the role, we will review applications on a rolling basis.  Early applications are strongly encouraged, as the advert will be closed once suitable candidates have been identified.

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