Cost Accounting Manager

Cost Accounting and Pricing Manager (Food Manufacturing)

$130,000-$145,000 Salary & Bonus plus Benefits

Open to Relocation

US Citizens Only

The Cost Accounting and Pricing Manager leads financial analysis, standard product costing, pricing models, and product‑line profitability strategies. This role bridges financial reporting, commercial sales, and shop‑floor production by overseeing data synchronization between Net Suite ERP and Nulogy Shop Floor / Co‑Pack systems. The manager identifies margin‑improvement opportunities, evaluates pricing strategies, tracks manufacturing variances, and delivers SKU and customer‑level profitability analysis to maximize overall business margins.

This position reports to the VP of Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A).

• Build data visualizations for plant operations and sales margins in Power BI or Tableau and use advanced Excel capabilities (macros, Power Query, complex formulas) for price/volume/mix analysis.
• Manage product BOM and establish and update standard costs for raw ingredients, packaging, and labor in Net Suite and Nulogy.
• Analyze daily and monthly manufacturing variances, focusing heavily on direct and indirect labor variances, material variances, line productivity, yields, and scrap across all assigned locations.
• Partner with regional plant production managers to identify root causes of yield variances using Nulogy real‑time manufacturing logs.
• Audit and make recommendations to refine and optimize product formulations, bills of materials (BOMs), and processing routings.
• Analyze and understand indirect manufacturing costs and capacity utilization for cost allocation purposes.
• Develop, maintain, and approve data‑driven customer and product pricing models for new and existing product introductions and custom co‑packing requests.
• Analyze the financial impact of raw material and ingredient commodity price fluctuations on existing product pricing, including customer and SKU purchase price variance (PPV) true‑ups.
• Provide financial models and margin impact analysis to the VP of FP&A during customer RFPs and contract negotiations.
• Review and monitor customer and vendor agreements to ensure the commercial terms are consistent with pricing models and invoicing.
• Lead comprehensive SKU profitability analysis to identify low‑margin or loss‑making product lines.
• Conduct customer profitability analysis, evaluating net margins after factoring in new material and indirect costs.
• Deliver variable contribution margin and gross margin performance reports.
• Maintain and prepare management reporting that sets forth informative KPI’s at the customer and SKU level and bridges those results to the company’s budget and pricing models.
• Identify margin variances and work with sales, operations, and supply chain personnel to take corrective action.
• Support the VP of FP&A in preparing the multi‑facility annual manufacturing budget and quarterly corporate forecasts.
• Serve as the finance owner for data alignment between Net Suite (financial sub‑ledger) and Nulogy (production execution) across multiple plants.
• Oversee daily/weekly inventory reconciliations between Net Suite and Nulogy to eliminate multi‑site inventory variances.
• Audit Nulogy production logs across facilities to ensure accurate consumption of raw ingredients, packaging material, and labor routing steps.

• Minimum of 5–7 years of experience in cost accounting, pricing, or commercial financial analysis.
• Prior experience working directly within a food manufacturing, beverage, or perishable goods environment, with at least 1–2 years in a supervisory, team‑lead, or project‑management capacity.
• Ability to present complex financial and pricing concepts to executive teams, plant operations, and corporate sales teams.
• Strong attention to detail regarding yield calculations, product shelf‑life risk, and customer contract terms.
• Self‑motivated leader comfortable handling large, unstructured production and commercial datasets across multiple sites.
• Experience building data visualizations in Power BI or Tableau and advanced Excel capabilities (macros, Power Query, complex formulas).
• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field.
• Professional certification: CPA or CMA designation strongly preferred.
• Strong quantitative and analytical skills, including analyzing and clearly explaining budget‑to‑actual results.
• Excellent communication skills, able to translate financial data into clear insights on revenue, cost, and performance trends.

Location:

Elgin, Illinois (on site).