Cost Analyst

SPOC Energy is an approximately $150 million annual-revenue manufacturer of power-control solutions used in oil and gas extraction, hybrid electrification, and data center projects. The Cost Analyst is a hands-on finance, accounting, and operational analytics professional responsible for creating deep visibility into product cost, inventory, gross margin, manufacturing performance, and the business processes that generate the underlying accounting transactions.

Reporting to the Assistant Controller, this role serves as the Finance & Accounting subject-matter expert for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) as it relates to cost, inventory, manufacturing, Quote-to-Cash/Order-to-Cash, and Procure-to-Pay. The Cost Analyst partners closely with the Director of Finance, Financial Analyst, Accounting, Operations, Supply Chain, Purchasing, Sales, Customer Service, and Engineering. The position is analytics-first, with secondary responsibility for journal entries and related accounting support. The successful candidate will understand the operational process that creates the accounting, trace financial results back through BC to the underlying business activity, identify root causes, quantify financial impact, and convert findings into actionable process and business recommendations.

• Serve as the Finance & Accounting subject-matter expert for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, with deep functional knowledge of the transactions, master data, posting logic, subledgers, and general-ledger impact supporting sales, purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, and costing.
• Develop complete end-to-end understanding of the Quote-to-Cash/Order-to-Cash cycle, including quote, sales order, demand, production or fulfillment, shipment, invoicing, revenue recognition, cost of goods sold, gross margin, cash collection, and the related BC transactions and postings.
• Develop complete end-to-end understanding of the Procure-to-Pay cycle, including demand and material requirements, purchase requisition/order, receipt, inventory availability and valuation, vendor invoice, accounts payable, payment, purchase price variance, and the related BC transactions and postings.
• Understand BC manufacturing and inventory flows from raw material through staging, consumption, work in process, production output, finished goods, shipment, and cost of goods sold, including the timing and financial impact of each transaction.
• Understand and validate the setup and financial implications of items, bills of material, routings, work centers/machine centers, labor standards, overhead rates, costing methods, posting groups, dimensions, and other master data that drive product cost and financial reporting.
• Trace financial and margin results from the general ledger and reporting layer back through BC item ledger entries, value entries, production activity, purchasing activity, sales activity, and source transactions to determine the operational cause of financial results.
• Partner with process owners to improve Quote-to-Cash, Order-to-Cash, Procure-to-Pay, inventory, and manufacturing processes when financial analytics identify control gaps, transaction errors, inefficient workflows, poor master data, or unfavorable business outcomes.
• Use financial analytics as a management tool for the underlying business process: identify where operational behavior is creating unfavorable accounting or margin outcomes, quantify the impact, recommend corrective actions, and follow issues through resolution.

• Develop and maintain detailed analysis of inventory valuation, movements, turns, days on hand, working capital, and inventory requirements.
• Analyze and explain standard-cost variances, purchase price variance, material usage, labor, overhead, scrap, yield, and other manufacturing variances.
• Support standard-cost development and cost rolls, including analysis of bills of material, routings, labor standards, overhead assumptions, and cost drivers.
• Perform deep analysis of excess, obsolete, slow-moving, and at-risk inventory; support reserve calculations and recommend actions to improve inventory productivity.
• Support cycle-count and physical-inventory processes through discrepancy analysis, root-cause investigation, financial reporting, and control improvement.
• Develop inventory forecasts and analytical models connecting demand, production, purchasing, material usage, and inventory requirements.
• Partner directly with Operations, Supply Chain, Purchasing, and Engineering to understand and improve the operational drivers of cost and inventory performance.
• Build a detailed understanding of how material cost, direct labor, applied overhead, purchase price variance, material usage, scrap, yield, production efficiency, and other manufacturing activity accumulate into inventory value and ultimately flow through cost of goods sold.
• Reconcile standard and actual operational activity to inventory and cost accounting, identifying whether variances originate from purchasing, material usage, labor performance, overhead application, production execution, master data, transaction timing, or system setup.

• Analyze gross margin by product, product family, customer, project, market, and other relevant business dimensions.
• Develop price/cost/mix and price-volume-mix analyses and explain period-over-period changes in gross margin.
• Identify margin leakage, unfavorable cost trends, purchasing impacts, production inefficiencies, and opportunities to improve profitability.
• Provide recurring margin reporting with concise explanations of key drivers, risks, trends, and recommended actions.
• Build analytical tools that connect operational activity to financial results and enable management to make better pricing, sourcing, production, and inventory decisions.
• Create gross-margin bridges that explain changes in profitability through price, volume, mix, material cost, labor, overhead, purchasing, usage, scrap, yield, production efficiency, and other operational drivers.
• Drill from reported gross margin to the underlying BC transactions and operating activity, distinguishing commercial drivers from purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, costing, and process-execution drivers.
• Work with Operations, Supply Chain, Purchasing, Sales, and Engineering to translate margin analytics into specific actions that improve pricing, sourcing, production efficiency, inventory utilization, transaction discipline, and profitability.

• Partner closely with the Financial Analyst responsible for FP&A by supplying cost, inventory, margin, and manufacturing insights used in budgets, forecasts, management reporting, and financial models.
• Support annual budgeting and periodic forecasting for inventory, cost of goods sold, gross margin, and relevant operational drivers.
• Assist with monthly actual-to-budget and actual-to-forecast variance analysis.
• Develop recurring KPI reporting and dashboards for inventory, cost, margin, and manufacturing performance.
• Support ad-hoc financial and operational analyses requested by the Director of Finance and other business leaders.

• Support month-end close activities related to inventory, cost of goods sold, manufacturing variances, reserves, and gross margin.
• Prepare or support journal entries and account reconciliations associated with assigned cost and inventory areas.
• Investigate accounting discrepancies and ensure analytical conclusions reconcile to the general ledger and underlying operational data.
• Support internal controls, audit requests, documentation, and process improvements related to inventory and cost accounting.

• Operate as a proactive business partner rather than a report producer: investigate issues, determine root causes, and bring conclusions and recommendations.
• Develop strong working relationships across Finance, Accounting, Operations, Supply Chain, Purchasing, and Engineering.
• Spend time with operational teams and processes to understand how products are built, how costs are incurred, and how operational decisions affect financial performance.
• Understand the complete operational workflow behind financial results and become a trusted resource for explaining how day-to-day business decisions and BC transactions affect inventory, cost, gross margin, working capital, and the general ledger.
• Take ownership of assigned analyses and deliver accurate, timely, decision-useful work with limited supervision.
• Challenge unusual results, validate data integrity, and follow issues through resolution.

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field required.
• Open to candidates ranging from strong developing professionals to experienced cost/manufacturing finance professionals; relevant manufacturing experience is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated understanding of cost accounting, inventory accounting, standard costing, manufacturing variances, and gross-margin analysis.
• Strong analytical capability with the ability to move from large data sets to clear business conclusions.
• Strong accounting foundation and ability to support journal entries, reconciliations, and month-end close when needed.
• Demonstrated ability to understand and analyze end-to-end business processes, including how operational activity flows through an ERP system and ultimately affects inventory, cost of goods sold, gross margin, subledgers, and the general ledger.
• Manufacturing ERP experience strongly preferred, including practical knowledge of inventory, purchasing, sales, production, costing, and transaction-level root-cause analysis.
• CPA, CMA, or other professional certification is valued but not required.

• Advanced functional expertise in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is strongly preferred; the successful candidate must develop expert-level command of BC as it relates to sales, purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, costing, subledgers, posting logic, dimensions, and general-ledger integration.
• Deep understanding of Business Central Quote-to-Cash/Order-to-Cash and Procure-to-Pay processes, including the operational workflow, system transactions, accounting entries, controls, and data generated throughout each cycle.
• Strong understanding of Business Central manufacturing and costing functionality, including items, bills of material, routings, work centers/machine centers, production orders, consumption, output, WIP, finished goods, item ledger entries, value entries, standard cost, variances, and cost of goods sold.
• Ability to independently navigate BC from summarized financial results to transaction-level detail, validate posting behavior and master data, reconcile subledgers to the general ledger, and identify root causes of cost, inventory, margin, and process issues.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills, including financial modeling, data analysis, pivot tables, lookups, Power Query or similar data-transformation capabilities, and large-data-set manipulation.
• Experience with Power BI and/or similar business intelligence and visualization tools preferred.
• Experience with Datarails or similar FP&A/reporting platforms is a plus.
• Ability to independently extract, organize, validate, reconcile, and analyze data from ERP and reporting systems and translate that data into actionable financial and operational insight.
• Strong understanding of data structures and the relationship between operational transactions, master data, item/value entries, subledgers, financial reporting, and the general ledger.

The ideal Cost Analyst is curious, highly accountable, organized, accurate, and equally comfortable on the shop floor, inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and in a financial analysis. This individual understands that accounting results are generated by operational processes and system transactions. They do not stop at identifying that gross margin or a variance changed; they trace the result through BC, determine the purchasing, inventory, labor, overhead, manufacturing, commercial, master-data, or process driver that caused it, quantify the financial impact, communicate the story clearly, and recommend what should happen next. The role requires a strong ownership mindset, a desire to become a Business Central expert, willingness to work across functional boundaries, and commitment to using financial analytics to improve both business performance and the processes that create the accounting.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION / EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

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