Cost Accountant at Watershed Consulting

Purpose of the position:

• The cost accountant position is accountable for the ongoing analysis of process constraints, costing projects, margin analysis, and tracing costs back to underlying activities.  The person is responsible for constructing and monitoring those cost-effective data accumulation systems needed to provide an appropriate level of costing information to management.

Qualifications, Experience & Skills:

• National Diploma / CIMA qualification or Hons degree
• 4+ years of Cost accounting experience in a manufacturing environment.
• Experience of Syspro
• Affinity for figures
• Excellent problem-solving skills
• Strong administrative skills
• Organised, neat and pays attention to detail.
• Able to cope under pressure & work as part of a team.
• Stock knowledge
• Fluent in English and Afrikaans

The primary tasks include:

• Prepare job closure and costing summary ensuring all supporting documentation is on file.
• Costing of manufactured parts used in Production
• Variance analysis & resolution.
• Assist with stock counts.
• Assist with financial year-end audit

Duties:

Labour and Overhead costing

• Maintain the line items for direct materials, labour and overhead on the bill of material or recipe for each product.
• Preparing standard cost budgets for manufacturing.
• Calculate, analyse, account for, and report monthly cost variances for direct materials, direct labour, indirect labour and manufacturing overhead.
• Assist sales with product pricing using an already defined methodology.

Inventory Transaction

• Load new Raw Material and Spares stock codes.
• Process scrap notes, concessions and adjustment.
• Resolve stock related queries.
• Maintain an accurate perpetual inventory.
• Work with other departments to conduct and reconcile physical inventory cycle counts and analyse and report variances.

Compliance/Policies and Procedures

• Execute and maintain procedures accurately and consistently calculating production rates, downtime, and change-over times for department performance measures.
• Developing a standardised policy and procedure of the standard costing system, such as inventory management, cost allocation and new product development (NPD) calculation.
• Ensuring that cost accounting transactions align with GAAP, company policy and IFRS.

Reporting / Analysis

• Variance analysis, sales reporting, balance sheet reconciliations and profit and loss.
• Prepare monthly reporting and analysing actual versus budget/forecasts.
• Proactively analysing costs and supporting relevant departmental managers.
• Interpreting Cost of Sales