Financial Analyst/Senior Financial Analyst

PURPOSE:

The Financial Analyst/Senior Financial Analyst will support the Controller in all aspects of financial planning, reporting, and analysis. Including owning key components of the month-end close and forecasting processes. This is an individual contributor role with broad exposure to month-end close, budgeting, forecasting, financial modeling, and operational analysis across all business segments, which will allow opportunities to drive meaningful improvements in margin, cost control, and operational decision-making. The ideal candidate is organized and has prior experience in a food manufacturing environment, including month end close processes, financial reporting and analysis.

ESSENTIAL JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead and own month-end close activities to ensure accurate and timely reporting. Activities include, but not limited to, execution of close procedures, preparation of journal entries, account reconciliations, accruals, and preparation of variance analysis between actual results, budget, and prior year.
• Preparation of consolidated monthly, quarterly, and annual financial reporting packages for management and external stakeholders.
• Build and maintain driver based financial models to support pricing decisions, new product launches, customer profitability analysis, and capital expenditure requests.
• Partner with operations and plant management to analyze key bakery KPIs including ingredient yield, dough waste, scrap and shrink, labor efficiency, line throughput, downtime, and product produced per labor hour.
• Support standard cost development and maintenance, including bills of materials (BOMs), routings, and recipe costing for new and existing SKUs.
• Analyze raw material and packaging cost trends (flour, sugar, butter, eggs, oils, corrugate, bags) and quantify the financial impact of commodity price movements on margins.
• Assist with the annual budgeting process and rolling forecasts, working with department leaders to build accurate volume, revenue, and cost projections by product, customer, and production location.
• Perform customer, SKU, plant, and channel profitability analysis to identify margin improvement opportunities and provide recommendations to inform decision making processes.
• Support inventory analysis, including raw material usage variances, finished goods reconciliations, slow-moving and obsolete inventory reviews, and cycle count results.
• Prepare ad hoc financial analysis and reporting requests for management.
• Assist external audit team with the year-end audit requests, coordinate with external service providers to facilitate tax filings, and other compliance activities as needed.
• Continuously improve and streamline financial reporting packages and tools, automate recurring analyses, and strengthen internal controls.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATION STANDARDS

• Bachelor's degree in Finance and/or Accounting. MBA, CPA, or CMA strongly preferred.
• 3+ years of relevant experience in financial analysis, accounting, or FP&A
• Strong proficiency of GAAP, standard costing, manufacturing variance analysis, and full-cycle month-end close procedures, and financial statement analysis.
• Strong business acumen, intellectual curiosity, and a continuous-improvement mindset.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with high attention to detail.
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Excel, including but not limited to, pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, and financial modeling.
• Strong proficiency in reporting tools such as Power BI, Dashboards, or similar.
• Experience with an ERP system (such as NetSuite, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, or similar) is preferred.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain financial concepts to non-finance plant and operations staff.
• Self-motivated with the ability to manage competing priorities and meet deadlines, with first time quality, in a fast-paced manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated ability to translate operational data into clear financial insights and present recommendations to senior leadership.
• Collaborative and able to work effectively with other members of the company, including across departments.
• Prior experience in commercial bakery or manufacturing environment is preferred.
• Direct experience with standard cost setting and manufacturing variance reporting in a multi-site operation is preferred.
• Experience with an ERP system (such as NetSuite, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, or similar) is preferred.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Company Vision, Mission, and value statements
• Compliance with GMP standards for attire and personal hygiene

 MENTAL DEMANDS:

• Able to analyze, organize, summarize and accurately document required data.
• Strong attention to detail, organized and communicative.
• Considerate, yet convincing and decisive when dealing with others in the organization.
• Responsive collaborator with the ability to quickly prioritize numerous crucial tasks.
• Task and goal-oriented and capable of functioning in an entrepreneurial and corporate setting.
• Able to prioritize and work with all levels of organization.
• Accumulating data based on facts to make the best decisions for our organization.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit, stand, walk, use hands to finger, handle, or feel, reach with hands and arms, climb or balance, stoop, kneel, crouch, crawl, talk or hear. Employees may have to push and pull using appropriate carts that are available to them. Additionally, employees may have to lift and carry up to fifty pounds independently on a regular basis. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close distance vision, color, and shade differentiation to manage the bakery products on the floor. Duties may require occasional travel on behalf of the company.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

This position is scheduled to work on a shift basis but is subject to work different hours as business demands change. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly exposed to moving mechanical parts. The employee is occasionally exposed to wet and/or humid conditions, high, precarious places, strong aromas of spices, dusts, powders, or airborne particles, and elevated temperature variance. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate. Occupational hazards: Includes a variety of physical conditions, such as occasionally working on ladders, exposure to cleaning chemicals, working on wet floors, long hours on concrete floors.

EQUIPMENT, MACHINES AND SOFTWARE USED:

This position requires some computer skills in the operation and functioning of all programs used by the organization, i.e., Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook.