Cost Accounting Manager

Cost Accounting Manager

Salary: 131K - 146K

Location - Vista, CA

The Cost Accounting Manager is an experienced cost accounting leader responsible for building and leading the cost accounting function within Operations Finance, including standard costing, inventory valuation, manufacturing variance analysis, multi-plant inventory reconciliation, and margin reporting in SAP S/4

HANA. This role partners closely with Manufacturing, Procurement, Supply Chain, and Warehouse teams across multiple manufacturing plants to ensure product costs are accurately captured and reported, and plays a key role in strengthening cost accounting processes and controls as the Operations Finance function scales.

Essential Function Statements

• Maintain and update standard costs for raw materials, packaging, and finished goods in SAP S/4
  
  HANA, ensuring costs reflect current bills of materials (BOMs) and routings across all manufacturing plants.
• Oversee annual and periodic standard cost rolls in SAP S/4
  
  HANA, including labor and overhead rate development.
• Ensure inventory is properly valued in SAP S/4
  
  HANA and reconciled to the general ledger across all manufacturing plants and distribution locations, including raw materials, WIP, and finished goods.
• Review and approve journal entries related to inventory, cost of goods sold, and manufacturing overhead absorption.

• Analyze and report monthly manufacturing variances — purchase price variance (PPV), material usage/yield variance, labor efficiency variance, and overhead absorption variance — by plant and product line.
• Partner with plant and manufacturing leadership to identify root causes of variances and drive corrective action plans.
• Stand up and own the slow-moving and obsolete (SLOB) inventory reserve process, including monitoring scrap and obsolescence, ensuring reserve calculations are timely and well-supported, and driving timely write-off of inventory no longer usable through the Material Review Board (MRB) process.
• Prepare product margin and cost analysis to support pricing decisions, new product introductions, and manufacturing/operational decision-making.
• Develop and maintain variance reporting analyses in SAP S/4
  
  HANA and BI tools to give plant and executive leadership visibility into cost performance trends.

• Lead month-end close activities related to inventory and cost accounting across all manufacturing plants, ensuring accuracy and timeliness.
• Maintain and strengthen internal controls over inventory valuation, cost accounting, and physical inventory processes.
• Coordinate and support physical inventory counts and cycle counts across all plants, including reconciliation of count results to perpetual inventory and the general ledger.
• Ensure compliance with GAAP, company policy, and audit requirements related to cost accounting and inventory.
• Perform multi-plant inventory reconciliation each close cycle, reconciling perpetual inventory, inter-plant/intercompany transfers, and in-transit inventory in SAP S/4
  
  HANA to the general ledger.
• Establish and manage a documented month-end close calendar, ownership matrix, and deliverable-review process for cost accounting.

• Serve as the finance partner to Manufacturing, Warehouse, and Supply Chain across all manufacturing plants on cost-related questions and decisions.
• Identify and lead process improvement initiatives to increase the accuracy, efficiency, and scalability of cost accounting processes.
• Support the build-out of the Operations Finance function, including documentation of policies, procedures, and controls.
• Establish consistent documentation, file-management, and workpaper standards so analyses and close support are complete, traceable, and readily accessible.
• Directly supervise, coach, and develop cost accounting staff; set clear…