Cost Ananlyst

Your new company

Hays are delighted to be recruiting for an established and successful manufacturing business who are looking to appoint an experienced Manufacturing Cost Analyst to join their finance team.This is an excellent opportunity for someone with a strong background in manufacturing finance, cost accounting or management accounting who enjoys working closely with operational teams and wants a role where they can have a genuine impact on business performance.Reporting to the Cost Controller, you will take responsibility for providing accurate and timely manufacturing cost information, maintaining standard costing data and analysing operational performance across materials, labour, inventory and production efficiencies.

Your new role

As Manufacturing Cost Analyst, you will play a key role in delivering robust financial and operational information to support decision-making across the business.You will work closely with Finance, Production, Engineering and Commercial teams, providing detailed analysis and helping non-finance stakeholders understand the financial impact of manufacturing performance.Your responsibilities will include:

• Maintaining and controlling standard costs across manufactured products, including raw materials, labour and manufacturing overheads.
• Reviewing and maintaining Bills of Materials (BOMs) and routing information to ensure costing information remains accurate.
• Analysing weekly and monthly manufacturing variances, including material usage and yield, labour efficiency, scrap, overhead expenditure and production performance.
• Developing and producing weekly KPI reporting on key manufacturing and operational variances.
• Supporting inventory control and valuation, including reconciliations and the investigation of stock discrepancies.
• Monitoring slow-moving and obsolete inventory and reporting on stock held across internal and external warehouse locations.
• Supporting year-end stock counts, inventory processes and audit requirements.
• Preparing the annual standard costing budget, including material cost build-ups, BOM and routing analysis and year-on-year cost movements.
• Loading new budget and standard cost information into the ERP system.
• Acting as a Finance Business Partner to Production and Engineering teams, including attending operational and shop-floor meetings.
• Helping operational teams understand financial information and identify opportunities to improve efficiencies and reduce waste.
• Undertaking detailed product and variable cost analysis across existing product ranges.
• Working with Engineering and Commercial teams to calculate the expected costs of new product introductions (NPI).
• Preparing manufacturing-related journals, accruals and reconciliations as part of the month-end close.
• Supporting reporting relating to inventory and cost of goods sold (COGS).
• Assisting with year-end accounting, compliance and audit requirements.
• Supporting intercompany transfer pricing and business change requests relating to new products.
• Undertaking additional analysis and ad hoc projects as required.

What you'll need to succeed

You will ideally have at least 2-3 years' experience within a manufacturing, engineering or industrial environment, with good exposure to cost accounting or manufacturing finance.You may be part-qualified CIMA, fully qualified, or Qualified by Experience (QBE). Most importantly, you will be able to demonstrate strong practical experience of manufacturing costing and understand how finance interacts with production and operational performance.You will ideally have experience in areas including:

• Standard costing and product costing
• Bills of Materials and routings
• Manufacturing variance analysis
• Inventory accounting and stock valuation
• Material, labour and overhead analysis
• Month-end accounting
• Cost of goods sold
• Budgeting and forecasting
• ERP systems, ideally SAP or Microsoft Dynamics
• Intermediate to advanced Excel, including VLOOKUPs, PivotTables and data manipulation

This is a hands-on role, so you will need to be comfortable getting into the detail while also communicating your findings clearly to operational and non-finance colleagues.Strong interpersonal skills are particularly important, as you will work closely with colleagues across Finance, Manufacturing, Production and Engineering.

What you'll get in return

This is an excellent opportunity to take on a varied and commercially focused manufacturing finance role within an established business.You will have significant exposure to the operational side of the organisation and the opportunity to use your costing and analytical skills to influence decision-making, improve manufacturing performance and support continuous improvement.The role would particularly suit an experienced Cost Accountant, Manufacturing Accountant, Management Accountant or Costing Analyst looking for a position where they can combine strong technical accounting skills with operational and commercial involvement.

What you need to do now

If you're interested in this role, click 'apply now' to forward an up-to-date copy of your CV, or call us now.
If this job isn't quite right for you, but you are looking for a new position, please contact us for a confidential discussion about your career.

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