Cost Accountant

Why you’ll love it here!

+ Benefits include Medical, Dental, Vision, Tuition Reimbursement, Pet, and Legal Insurance

+ 401k
+ Community Service Day

+ Spotlight Awards

+ National Sales Excellence Awards

+ CFSP Prep Certification Program

POSITION SUMMARY:

• The Cost Accountant reports to the General Manager
• Located in Winston-Salem 
• Full-Time
• In Office 

Position Summary

We are a custom manufacturer of engineered-to-order products serving a diverse set of end markets. Every job is built to customer specification from released drawings, which makes accurate job costing, BOM integrity, and quote-to-actual discipline the backbone of our financial performance.

The Cost Accountant is responsible for tracking, analyzing, and reporting on the cost of every project from quote through shipment. This role owns standard costs, job cost variance analysis, WIP, and inventory valuation, and works shoulder-to-shoulder with estimators, production, and shipping to protect margin.

Key Responsibilities

Job / Project Costing (Primary Focus)

• Own project cost tracking for every active job from released work order through final invoice.
• Reconcile estimated vs. actual costs by job: raw materials, components, hardware, subcontract services, freight-in, direct labor, and shop overhead.
• Analyze margin performance by product family, customer, and channel; identify margin leakage.
• Partner with estimators post-shipment on quote-to-actual reviews; feed learnings back into standard costs and future bids.
• Track and report on change orders, scope adjustments, punch-list work, and warranty/rework costs by job.

Standard Costing & Variance Analysis

• Maintain standard costs for raw materials, components, hardware, and purchased parts; refresh routinely as commodity pricing moves.
• Calculate and explain monthly variances: material price (PPV), material usage/yield, labor rate, labor efficiency, and overhead absorption.
• Track scrap and yield by material type; work with production on yield improvement.
• Support burdened labor rate and shop overhead rate development (machine hours vs. labor hours, by work center).

Inventory & WIP

• Own inventory valuation for raw materials, WIP, and finished goods.
• Oversee cycle counts and annual physical inventory; reconcile variances and drive root-cause corrections.
• Monitor aged WIP — projects that have stalled on the floor or awaiting field data — and escalate to operations.
• Ensure proper cutoff for material receipts, subcontract services, and outbound freight.

Financial Reporting & Month-End Close

• Prepare monthly Cost of Goods Manufactured (COGM) and Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) with variance commentary.
• Post journal entries for inventory adjustments, WIP roll-forward, scrap, freight, and overhead absorption.
• Reconcile inventory, WIP, and cost-related GL accounts.
• Deliver KPI reporting: gross margin by job / product line / customer, labor utilization, machine utilization, scrap %, on-time-ship cost impact, quote accuracy.

Business Partnering

• Serve as the finance contact for shop supervisors, project managers, estimators, and purchasing.
• Support bid reviews on large or strategic projects; provide cost inputs for value engineering and material substitution decisions.
• Contribute financial analysis to make-vs-buy decisions (insource vs. outsource, purchased vs. internally produced components).
• Provide costing input on CapEx requests.

Compliance & Controls

• Support internal and external audits — inventory observation, cost testing, WIP substantiation.
• Ensure adherence to US GAAP for inventory, WIP, and revenue recognition on custom-manufactured goods.
• Document cost accounting methodologies, standard cost roll procedures, and month-end SOPs.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or related field.
• 3–5 years of cost accounting experience in a manufacturing environment — job-shop, custom manufacturing, or make-to-order preferred.
• Working knowledge of standard costing, job/project costing, WIP accounting, variance analysis, and inventory valuation methods (standard, weighted average, FIFO).
• Proficiency in an ERP used in discrete or make-to-order manufacturing (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Epicor, Infor, NetSuite, or comparable).
• Advanced Excel: pivot tables, XLOOKUP/INDEX-MATCH, SUMIFS, financial modeling.
• Solid understanding of US GAAP as applied to inventory and manufacturing.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a custom or engineered-to-order manufacturing environment.
• Exposure to project-based accounting on installed or delivered products.
• CMA, CPA, or actively pursuing certification.
• Familiarity with lean manufacturing / continuous improvement.
• Working knowledge of BI/reporting tools (Power BI, Tableau, or similar).
• Comfort reading engineering drawings and BOMs well enough to have a substantive conversation with estimators and production.

Key Competencies

• Shop-floor comfort — willing and able to walk the floor, ask questions, and translate what you see into cost insight.
• Analytical rigor — reconciles numbers to source, flags anomalies, doesn't paper over unexplained variances.
• Detail-oriented — in a custom-build environment, small BOM errors compound quickly across jobs.
• Clear communicator — can explain a job cost variance to a shop supervisor as clearly as to the Controller.
• Self-directed —manages month-end deadlines and ad-hoc project reviews without hand-holding.
• Ability to successfully pass a background check post offer acceptance. 

Work Environment

• Split between office and active production floor — expect noise, PPE (safety glasses, hearing protection, closed-toe footwear), and time spent at work centers observing production.
• Regular interaction with estimating, production, purchasing, shipping, and project management.
• Occasional extended hours during month-end close, year-end, and physical inventory.

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