Costing and Budgeting Section Head - Retail

Key Accountabilities

• Lead end-to-end costing for all stock-keeping units including raw materials, packaging, logistics, warehousing, and import-related costs.
• Analyze cost variances between actual and standard, providing root-cause analysis for margin changes.
• Drive the annual budgeting process covering profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow across all sales channels.
• Prepare monthly rolling forecasts incorporating seasonality, promotions, and new launch cycles.
• Monitor category-wise gross margins and recommend pricing strategies.
• Track promotional spending against budget and measure return on investment.
• Analyze individual location profit and loss statements including rent, staff, occupancy, and operating costs.
• Oversee inventory valuation and provisioning for slow-moving or short-life items.
• Partner with supply chain to optimize replenishment costs and reduce write-offs.
• Lead periodic physical counts and reconcile costing discrepancies.
• Present monthly budget versus actual reports to operations and senior management with variance explanations.
• Support commercial teams in launch cost tracking including sampling and testers.
• Lead and mentor a small team of cost analysts and budget coordinators.
• Drive automation in budget consolidation and standard cost updates.

• 8+ years of experience in costing and budgeting or management accounting.
• At least 2 to 3 years in a supervisory or section head role.
• Bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, or business administration.
• Professional certifications including CMA, CIMA, CPA, FP&A, or supply chain costing are a plus.
• Experience across fast-moving consumer goods, food and beverage, cosmetics, or beauty retail sectors.
• Proven experience with retail profit and loss components including location expenses and promotional accounting.
• Experience with budgeting tools and business intelligence platforms.
• Familiarity with enterprise resource planning systems in finance and controlling modules.
• Resilience under month-end closing and budget season pressure.