About the position
Finance Manager (Management Accounting & Business Intelligence)
- Position Type: Permanent
- Reporting To: Managing Director
Manufacturing company specializing in private-label personal care and beauty products. We combine manufacturing excellence with an entrepreneurial spirit. We are seeking a hands-on, commercially minded Finance Manager to step into this role.
Role Purpose
The Finance Manager will take complete ownership of the finance function, providing accurate, timely, and commercially meaningful financial insights to drive operational decisions. This role is far more than a technical accounting position—it requires someone who can actively translate financial and operational data into strategic business intelligence to support the Managing Director and broader leadership team.
Key Performance Areas
- Financial & Management Accounting: Prepare comprehensive monthly management accounts, balance sheet reviews, income statements, and financial reports. Oversee the day-to-day financial controls and reconciliations.
- Manufacturing Costing & Analysis: Drive standard costing, product costing, and margin analysis. Handle Bills of Materials (BOM), overhead recovery rate calculations, and material/labour variance analysis to optimize factory efficiency.
- Cash Flow & Working Capital Management: Direct the company's cash flow tracking, liquidity forecasting, and capital utilization.
- Budgeting & Financial Planning: Lead the annual budgeting processes and formulate the "latest estimates" to guide procurement and commercial plans.
- Business Intelligence & Reporting: Actively build and manage Power BI dashboards and reports. Interrogate large datasets to transition traditional Excel-based tracking into modern BI solutions.
- Statutory & Tax Compliance: Manage all SARS and statutory compliance requirements.
- Team Oversight: Provide operational control and oversight across key transactional areas, including Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Payroll, and the General Ledger, in partnership with the Financial Controller.
Inherent Minimum Requirements
- Formal Education:
- A completed BCom Accounting, BCom Financial Accounting, BCom Management Accounting, or an equivalent recognized accounting/finance degree.
- Advantageous: Additional certifications in management accounting, costing, data analytics, or Power BI.
- Professional Experience:
- Minimum of 5 years’ post-graduate accounting/finance experience.
- At least 2–3 years in a senior accounting, management accounting, or financial management role.
- Proven experience working directly in a manufacturing, production, or factory environment is mandatory.
- Technical & System Skills:
- Strong practical experience with an ERP system; Syspro experience is strongly preferred.
- Advanced MS Excel capability.
- Proven hands-on experience using Power BI for reporting and building automated dashboards.
Key Personal Attributes
- Analytical & Inquisitive: Possesses a strong analytical mind with the intellectual curiosity to dig behind the numbers and uncover operational variances.
- Commercially Astute: Understands the relationship between costing, pricing, margins, inventory turn, and bottom-line profitability.
- Excellent Communicator: Confident in engaging with senior management and capable of explaining complex financial data to non-financial operational managers.
- Action-Oriented: Hands-on, solutions-oriented, and comfortable taking independent ownership in a fast-paced factory environment.
Desired Skills:
- BOM
- Management accounting
- technical accounting
