USMC Accounting Financial Management, Consultant

ROLE DETAILS             

CLIENT:            United States Marine Corp (USMC)
PROJECT:           Audit Response, Coordination, Remediation, and Coaching
WORK LOCATION:     National Capital Region
WORK SITE:         Client site
LABOR CATEGORY:    Accountant III
CAREER LEVELS:     Analyst, Consultant, Manager, experience level dependent

CLEARANCE:                      
Must hold an active DoD Secret or higher
EDUCATION:                     
Bachelor’s degree from an accredited United States college or university in Business, Accounting, or Finance
CERTIFICATIONS:              
N/A
EXPERIENCE:                     
Experience in financial statement compilation and reporting process as well as audit response and remediation in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and/or Statements of Federal Financial Accounting Standards (SFFAS).

Candidate must have a minimum of 7-9 years of full-time (excluding internships) experience within the past 10 years of progressive experience providing accounting services to the Federal Government agencies or Fortune 500 companies.

ROLE DESCRIPTION
– Candidate will become a member of the team supporting the USMC Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness (FIAR) program’s goals to develop and sustain appropriate internal controls over its business and to achieve auditable financial statements and processes across the USMC.
– Candidate will use knowledge of GAAP and government accounting procedures, of Department of Defense (DoD) structures, processes, systems, and of the DoD planning, programming, budgeting, and execution processes to provide both strategic and tactical guidance to the team and client.

KEY TEAM OBJECTIVES:
– Collaborate with key stakeholders and process owners to evaluate internal controls, processes, and policies, develop and implement measurable, realistic, and timely remediation activities to ensure the organization has proper controls, governance, and risk management processes in place to improve the organization’s audit readiness posture.
– Mature and enhance audit infrastructure for efficient and sufficient audit response and coordination
– Provide strategic guidance and technical assistance for all phases of audit preparation and remediation
– Enhance client governance framework to ensure sustainment of financial controls per OMB A-123

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES
General duties may include assisting the team and/or leading teams and/or task efforts to:
– Perform audit risk assessments of existing financial business processes for adherence to guidance, regulation, law, and appropriate accounting procedures and provide recommendations for process improvements.
– Create new and/or update existing internal controls for various business process to mitigate audit risk and provide for reliable and correctly presented financial data in support of the USMC Manager’s Internal Control Program aimed at preventing fraud, waste, and abuse of government resources.
– Conduct root cause analysis on Observations and Notices of Findings and Recommendations (NFRs) and either incorporate new recommendations into existing Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) or begin coordinating with stakeholders to develop new CAPs.
– Collaborate with stakeholder offices to identify and address deficiencies, assess sustainability, and ascertain that the root cause of the deficiency is sufficiently addressed through CAPs, and track and report milestone status throughout CAP implementation.
– Prepare CAP Validation packages and provide to the OMB A-123 Section for testing and prepare CAP Closure packages for leadership review and governance approval.
– Serve as audit liaison among client stakeholder groups and the independent public accountant (IPA) firm currently conducting a full financial statement audit of the USMC.
– Provide timely and accurate responses to audit-related inquiries in which client stakeholders may need clarification or status updates for audit-related deliverables.
– Develop presentations and other correspondence to facilitate enterprise-wide communications and continuous improvement over the audit engagement from key USMC stakeholders.
– Provide expertise, recommendations, and industry best practices to manage the Provided-By-Client (PBC) request, Observation and Notification of Findings and Recommendations, and exception reporting processes, to support continuous improvement and increased feedback throughout the audit engagement and remediation processes, to include guidance, business rules, and process workflows. 
– Complete the end-to-end process of PBCs, to include tracking and monitoring PBCs and follow-up questions in the designated audit response tool, gather, and review supporting documentation provided by stakeholders prior to submission to the IPA for completeness and schedule meetings with stakeholders to seek clarification from the IPA as required.
– Track, reconcile, and report PBC metrics, and provide quality control over responses to identify trends.
– Solicit and document lessons learned from client stakeholders to support an annual lessons learned conference or other opportunities to provide training and improvements.