Finance Project Officer

**Purpose of the Job**:
Are you ready to make an impact in our fast-growing USave brand?

As our customers are at the heart of what we do, our sole purpose is to provide all communities with high quality products at the lowest possible prices.

As Finance Project Officer, your experience in Finance will be crucial in delivering operational project services to USave as a channel and brand. This position supports the leadership team with coordinating activities to gather information, evaluating and recommending solutions to operational challenges. The role works across the value-chain with a view on products, services, processes, and systems.

This important role also coordinates projects, conducts research and analysis, and prepares reports or communications. Other areas of focus may include driving the identification and implementation of process improvements, policies, and procedures, managing relationships with various teams, and serving in an advisory capacity to leadership or other stakeholders.

**Job Objectives**:
This role operates in a very unpredictable context in that seemingly random requests for operational support, investigation or insight could surface just about 24/7. The role delivers nationally across RSA, and in all Non-RSA operating environments.

**Finance.**
- Maintain and reconcile general ledger accounts on a recurring basis, including posting monthly journal entries, completing account reconciliations, providing variance analyses and investigating discrepancies.
- Review and analyse monthly results in terms of sales, margins and costs vs. targets. Identify specific initiatives to improve productivity.
- Complete meaningful monthly reporting with variance analyses (MTD, QTD, YTD) to budgets and prior years.
- Identify possible weaknesses and implement process/system solutions to ensure compliance with control procedures.
- Exposure to the budget process of all divisions in Usave.
- Implement and ensure adherence to internal control processes.
- Assist with providing the correct data to bill suppliers.
- Prepare monthly management reports for review.
- Assist with preparing presentations to Management.
- Ad hoc analyses requested by Management to optimize the business.

**Service excellence.**
- Take briefs and requests from senior leadership at short notice and respond by preparing a high-level problem statement, provisional action plan, stakeholder list and anticipated
- Together with other stakeholders, design, define, develop, and deliver a ‘fix’ plan identifying the connections, opportunities or specific aspects that require remedial action or improvement.
- Respond to requests for immediate input and feedback as required - not all aspects of this role require a ‘project’ approach, discern the nature of request, and respond accordingly within the expected timeframe.

**Operational project delivery.**
- As relevant, translate operational ad hoc requests into workable short and long term ‘project’ approaches and outputs to frame the problem statement, identified activities, roles and responsibilities, timeline, and primary milestones.
- Create project status reports and ongoing status updates to senior stakeholders.
- Take ownership of all ‘project’ documents and engagements ensuring that discussions points and stakeholder inputs are captured and incorporated into decision making.
- Coordinating, assigning, and driving project team activities to ensure project objectives are met.
- Working with stakeholders, define the scope and plans for future project phases and work streams - particularly in more complex or longer range ‘fix’ plan scenarios where budgets and other resources will need to be planned and mobilised in advance.
- Ensuring all project and related support deliverables are achieved in line with time, cost and quality criteria.

**Recommendations, reporting and insights.**
- As far as possible and appropriate, support feedback, input, insights, and recommendations with data.
- Work with varied data and ensure readiness of the integrity of data to support accurate reporting assumptions, forecasts, and trend analysis.
- Use data to create and support feasibility models - forecasts, ROI and break-even analysis scenarios etc.
- Transform data into insights that drive business and customer value using data analytics, data visualisation and data modeling techniques and technologies.
- Turn data into critical information and knowledge that can be used to make sound business decisions.
- Analyse business scenarios, problems and issues using data from internal and external sources to provide insight to decision-makers, provide scenarios and make recommendations where appropriate.
- Identify and interpret trends and patterns in datasets to locate
- Construct forecasts and recommendations based on business data and market knowledge.
- Provide input for cross-functional teams to address issues through data and reports.
- Produce datasets and reports for analysis u