The Role

Cost Accountant

Contract - 6 months

North Co Dublin

Role Purpose
To support the businesses manufacturing business by delivering accurate product costing, margin reporting, and cost analysis. This role provides strong cost visibility across ingredients, labour, yields, waste and overheads, enabling informed decision-making across Operations, Procurement and Commercial teams during the temporary cover period.

Key Responsibilities
Costing and margin
• Maintain accurate product, recipe/BOM and pack costings aligned to product ranges
• Ensure standard costs reflect current material prices, labour rates, yields and overheads
• Prepare and analyse customer/product margin performance, highlighting key drivers and recommended actions
• Support pricing and commercial proposals with robust costing, scenario modelling and sensitivity analysis
• Provide costing inputs to NPD, including new product costings, specification/recipe changes and post-launch reviews
Manufacturing performance
• Produce and investigate manufacturing variances including materials usage, purchase price variance, yield/waste, labour efficiency and overhead absorption
• Partner with Operations to understand performance drivers and support continuous improvement and cost reduction initiatives
• Support reporting on yield, waste, efficiency and giveaway, ensuring finance data ties to site performance metrics
• Develop and track cost-saving and profit-enhancing initiatives and support benefits realisation reporting
Inventory and month-end
• Support month-end close for COGS, inventory movements, WIP and finished goods
• Assist with cycle counts and stocktakes, including preparation, valuation, reconciliation and variance investigation
• Maintain strong controls around inventory valuation, accruals and cut-off, in line with Group requirements
• Prepare relevant costing and inventory information to support Monthly Management Accounts and Group reporting
Data integrity and systems
• Maintain costing inputs in ERP and related tools including BOMs/recipes, routings, labour standards, overhead rates and material prices
• Work closely with Procurement/Supply Chain to ensure purchase price changes, supplier updates, rebates/credits (where applicable) are reflected correctly
• Ensure strong control over master data impacting inventory and costing, and document key processes to support continuity
• Prepare clear, well-structured reporting for Finance and stakeholders; support internal/external audits as required

The Person

Skills, Experience and Qualifications
• Qualified or part-qualified accountant (ACA/ACCA/CIMA) or equivalent relevant experience
• Previous experience in manufacturing/FMCG cost accounting
• Strong knowledge of standard costing, variance analysis, and inventory accounting
• Advanced Excel skills; comfortable working with ERP systems and large datasets
• Strong analytical and communication skills—able to explain numbers clearly to non-finance teams
• High attention to detail; able to meet deadlines in a fast-paced, high-volume environment

The Package

Salary neg doe