Finance & Accounting Manager

Manager, Finance & Accounting

Reports to: Fractional CFO

Manages: No direct reports

Location: Remote U.S. (Eastern Time preferred, Central Time possible)

Type: Full-time

Title & level: Manager or Senior Manager

Compensation: $90,000-$109,999 (depending on qualifications)

Benefits: Generous leave, health insurance, & retirement package, remote work facilitation

Start date: January 2027, earlier preferred

About African Collaborative

African Collaborative invests exclusively in African-led organizations, providing the critical, multi-year capital needed to help them create purposeful, locally rooted change. Since launching in 2020, we have funded 45 organizations across 15 Sub-Saharan African countries with unrestricted, multi-year grants and tailored support services. Our partners are improving maternal and child health outcomes, increasing young people's access to education, and increasing income to youth farmers—amongst many other impactful solutions that prove that the future of sustainable African development is African-led.

The Opportunity

As part of African Collaborative's growth journey, we are bringing our finance function in-house. The Finance Team will consist of a fractional CFO – who sets financial strategy and represents AC on the highest-level financial matters – and the Finance & Accounting Manager who will own all of the organization's day-to-day finance work. As the Finance & Accounting Manager, you will manage everything from grant disbursements to vendor invoices to the accounting backbone that keeps AC's finances accurate and audit-ready, and you'll ultimately be responsible for building a finance function that is centered around our mission and key stakeholders. You will be a proactive thought partner to all AC departments – Development & Partnerships, Programs, and People & Operations – in addition to the CFO, COO and Co-CEOs. This role requires making sense of numbers, budgets and variances, and sharing insights or recommendations to help facilitate decisions that uplift the effectiveness of our work. In addition, you will build out, implement and support key financial processes, from budgeting and cashflow management to internal and funder reporting.

Key Responsibilities

General Ledger & Financial Reporting

Own AC's day-to-day bookkeeping (QuickBooks Online), including accurate transaction coding and timely revenue and expense recognition. Keep AC's financial systems (QuickBooks Online, Ramp) clean, current, and audit-ready year-round. This includes regular bank reconciliations, account reconciliations, cross-checking accuracy of syncing between QuickBooks and Ramp, and ensuring supporting documentation is complete. Understand and implement GAAP reporting requirements as they relate to AC's work. Review grant agreements and assess how to represent revenues across different types of grants (e.g., restricted by spend, restricted by time, unrestricted) and consult with technical experts (CFO, audit team) as needed. Deliver a timely monthly close process, with accurate accrual-based financials and insightful management summaries. Pull the monthly and quarterly BvA and develop insights alongside the CFO to present to AC management and the board (e.g., analysis of over and under spending in line with workplans, trends and unexpected findings, alignment of revenue with updates from the fundraising team). Optimize and align budget and accounting coding to support all financial and reporting processes. Lead AC's annual audit and 990/tax filings – serve as primary contact to the audit team, scheduling relevant calls, gathering documentation, taking responsibility for all requests, and responding to auditor questions. Serve as the team's day-to-day point person for all financial operations and systems questions.

Budgeting

Partner with COO and CFO to develop a comprehensive budgeting process. Own execution of key steps of the annual budgeting process, including template creation, supporting teams to draft department budgets in line with annual goals and building on previous period learnings, facilitating a conversation with team leads to build a holistic organizational budget, and compiling the budget for executive review and decision making. Support budget owners to manage their budgets throughout the year, by sharing variance information and forecasts proactively and partnering to prioritize and adjust, to ensure optimal spending towards goals. Partner with the Co-CEOs, CFO and COO to build out multiyear budgets that proactively inform long term decision making.

Strategic Support

Pull and prepare financial reports to support grant reporting, grant renewals, and funder requests. This will require deep collaboration with AC's Development & Partnerships team to understand what is needed from each funder to adequately report out on our impact. Partner with the CFO and COO to improve and maintain the financial tracking tools used for management decisions (like an updated cashflow and financial dashboard) and keep it current. Partner with the CFO on budget tracking and cash-flow visibility for management decisions, proactively flagging variances and tradeoffs rather than waiting to be asked. This will require a deep understanding of our various revenue streams, their disbursement timelines and restrictions, and interpreting management reports on accrual basis vs cash basis to ensure accurate projections and raise insights related to liquidity for upcoming periods. Prepare quarterly financial materials ahead of Finance Committee and Board meetings, so AC leadership can present with minimal last-minute lift. Work closely with the CFO to finalize those reports and develop insights so they are easy for AC leadership to share. Ultimately, serve as a partner to leadership to overlay numbers and strategy that informs decisions and shapes funder and board updates.

Grant Disbursements & Program Finance

Ensure our grantee partners have an excellent experience with our finance processes – from initial grant agreement to receipt of funds. This will be a collaborative effort between Finance and the Programs team (comprising our Portfolio Services team and Grantmaking Systems team). Review and optimize all grantmaking related finance processes, ensuring efficiency and effectiveness for the current level of scale and in anticipation for future growth. Manage grant payments to partner organizations (new and existing) – entering grant agreements and payment coding into Ramp (our spend management tool), tracking which grants are ready for disbursement, and preparing payment packages for Co-CEO approval. Maintain AC's Grant Tracker, keeping historical and active grant/payment data current and accurate. Ensure grantee partners are set up for payment, including collection and verification of bank details and payment method and cadence.

Accounts Payable & Vendor Management

Ensure AP are processed timely and accurately, meeting varying realities across all geographies, building on a deep understanding of how our expenditure supports our mission and diverse work streams. Process invoices from outside vendors and consultants from intake through Co-CEO approval and payment. Help vendors get set up for payment and ensure expense coding aligns with budget. Collaborate with People & Operations Manager to execute on known payables. Develop and manage a recurring process for cash disbursements.

Team Compensation & Operations Support

Partner with the People & Operations team to streamline travel and reimbursement policies to meet the full spectrum of needs and realities across departments and geographies. Process employee expense reimbursements accurately and on schedule. Partner closely with the People & Operations Manager on HR-related finance activities (like changes to benefits, payroll, 401K, and health insurance payments) to ensure the AC team is well-supported and receiving their full compensation package every month.

What You'll Bring

At least 7-8 years' progressive experience in a finance and accounting field with strong knowledge of U.S. GAAP reporting requirements. Track record as a Finance Business Partner: You have provided thought partnership to senior leadership on budgets, financial systems and decisions. You bring a deeply relational approach that fosters alignment across departments, curiosity to ask the right questions and an analytical mind to add insight to numbers. Advanced QuickBooks Online skills with ability to run full cycle bookkeeping and accurate and timely close out processes (incl. posting of expenses and revenues, journal entries, monthly reconciliations, optimizing chart of accounts, etc). Advanced proficiency in Excel (lookups, SUMIFS, pivot tables, etc) and experience building clear, decision-ready financial models. Experience with Financial Reporting (including periodic management reports in cash and accrual basis, budget variance analysis, revenue breakdowns by grant type, etc). You are known to turn financial reports into meaningful insights for non-finance audiences, highlighting trends, explanations and strategic questions linked to program goals and plans. Experience facilitating annual budgeting processes that involve multiple departments, and leading insightful budget tracking exercises that support proactive reallocation towards goal-aligned spending along the year. Experience managing audits, with a strong track record of leading the process as the main contact person, responding to audit queries and coordinating executive involvement. Experience developing financial policies and procedures that are mission and team centric, and flexibly serve varying realities; with a knack for ensuring buy-in and efficient roll-out during execution. Experience in a nonprofit context with an understanding of managing donor funding and/or grantmaking context are an added advantage. Great customer service skills and a desire to make finance processes seamless (and enjoyable!) for the AC team and our grantee partners. Comfort operating with real independence in a remote team early on – this role will often be the only full-time finance staff member, working alongside a part-time CFO. A demonstrated ownership mentality with a track record