Finance Manager

Join Sankoré International School in Nairobi, Kenya as a Finance Manager to build robust financial systems ahead of the school's 2026 opening.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 (for example, confirming whether a designated finance role is required under specific licensing, NGO, or education-sector conditions).
• 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.
• 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 (for example, capital budgeting, capital investment tracking, or risk management) so the School Director and Board can make an explicit ownership decision.

• 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.