Role Overview
- Sankoré is building the financial backbone of a brand-new school, and the Finance Manager is the person who makes that backbone strong, honest, and dependable from day one. This is an execution-focused role: Without it, budgets go untracked, tuition goes uncollected, and Sankoré cannot meet the financial discipline SHOFCO's audit standards require.
- The Finance Manager owns the day-to-day machinery of school finance — budgeting support, bookkeeping, banking, tuition collection, procurement reconciliation, and, eventually, payroll and HR administration — in close partnership with the Operations Manager, the School Director, and SHOFCO's central finance office. Because Sankoré is founding-stage, this person will build several of these systems working in tandem with the SankoréOS platform now in development for school-wide operations.
- This role sits at the center of two of the school's non-negotiables: financial integrity (SHOFCO requires multi-person, “multi-eyes” review on procurement and spend) and trust with families (tuition, financial aid, and financial assistance touch every household at Sankoré). Success here is measured in clean books, on-time reporting, and families who feel fairly and respectfully treated around money.
Key Responsibilities
Budgeting and Financial Planning
- Coordinate and manage Sankoré's annual budgeting cycle, working with the School Director and department leads to build a complete, defensible budget.
- Prepare the annual budget in a timely, well-documented manner for presentation to the Director and the Board.
- Present and defend the budget at Board meetings, answering questions on assumptions, variances, and risk.
- Monitor actual expenditure against budget throughout the year and flag variances early, not at period-end.
Bookkeeping, Banking, and Expenditure Tracking
- Maintain day-to-day bookkeeping for all Sankoré transactions, tracking expenditure against the approved budget.
- Manage the Sankoré bank account once it is operational (pending KRA PIN clearance), including reconciliations and cash flow tracking.
- Partner with SankoréOS as it comes online so financial data flows cleanly between the bookkeeping system and the school's broader operating platform, rather than living in parallel spreadsheets.
- Maintain an accurate, audit-ready paper and digital trail for every transaction.
Tuition and Family Financial Support
- Own tuition payment processing end-to-end: invoicing, collection, reconciliation, and receipt — beyond the stopgap receipting the Operations Manager currently handles.
- Proactively follow up on late and non-payments with clear, family-respectful communication and escalation paths.
- Build and manage, in partnership with the School Director, a system for processing requests for financial assistance outside of the formal scholarship program — with clear, consistent criteria families can trust.
- Coordinate with Admissions on sliding-scale tuition cases so financial and enrollment data stay aligned.
Procurement Compliance and Reconciliation
- Serve as the second set of eyes with the Operations Manager on procurement sign-off, satisfying SHOFCO's audit standard for multi-person review.
- Prepare the month- and period-end reconciliation package for SHOFCO's central finance office (statements of source and justification, three-vendor procurement documentation, and related audit artifacts) on schedule.
- In partnership with Operations, maintain procurement documentation to a standard that would hold up under an external audit at any time, not just at period-end.
Payroll and HR Systems Administration (as Sankoré grows)
- Create and manage Sankoré's payroll system, ensuring accurate and on-time pay for every staff member, every cycle.
- Build and administer HR-adjacent financial systems and communications, including pension entitlements and medical insurance enrollment and changes.
- Manage employee leave requests in coordination with the leadership team, outside of standard vacation tracking.
- Ensure Sankoré's payroll and HR-finance practices meet Kenyan statutory obligations (PAYE, NSSF, SHIF, and the Affordable Housing Levy), remitting on time and keeping documentation audit-ready.
Statutory, Legal, and Audit Compliance
- Keep Sankoré's financial operations compliant with Kenyan tax and statutory obligations, and flag any point where the school may need a dedicated compliance review.
- Support the School Director and SHOFCO finance leadership in preparing for internal and external audits.
- Maintain confidentiality and integrity as the steward of the school's most sensitive financial and HR-adjacent information.
Systems, Data, and Continuous Improvement
- Identify where manual, spreadsheet-based processes should be replaced by SankoréOS or other tools as the school scales.
- Bring a founding-stage mindset: build the system now so it can be handed off cleanly as Sankoré grows past current capacity.
- Flag, rather than absorb silently, any financial responsibility that has no clear owner so the School Director and Board can make an explicit ownership decision.
Candidate Profile
Required Experience
- Bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, business administration, or a related field.
- 2–4 years of relevant bookkeeping or accounting experience, ideally within a school, NGO, or small-to-mid-size organization.
- Working knowledge of Kenyan statutory payroll and tax compliance (PAYE, NSSF, SHIF, Affordable Housing Levy) and experience remitting these on schedule.
- Proficiency with accounting software and strong Microsoft Excel skills.
- Demonstrated integrity and discretion in handling sensitive financial and personnel data.
- Fluent written and spoken English and Kiswahili.
Preferred
- Progress toward, or completion of, a professional accounting qualification (CPA-K or ACCA).
- Prior experience in a school or educational institution finance office, including tuition or fee management systems.
- Experience working within multi-signatory or “multi-eyes” internal control environments.
- Experience administering payroll, pension schemes, or medical insurance benefits.
- Familiarity with NGO or nonprofit financial reporting and donor/board reporting standards.
How to Apply
Interested applicants should send their applications together with a detailed CV to recruitment@shofco.org email address. The Subject should clearly indicate the position being applied for.
