Costing & Commercial Finance Analyst
Manufacturing Environment
Are you a commercially astute Finance Manager who thrives in a fast‑paced manufacturing environment? This is a hands‑on, highly visible role offering genuine influence across operations, supply chain, and commercial decision‑making.
You'll play a key role in driving cost accuracy, profitability, and insight at plant level, combining strong management accounting with manufacturing cost control and commercial analysis. This is an excellent opportunity for someone who enjoys partnering with the business and making a tangible impact.
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The Role
This position blends hands‑on management accounting with a strong focus on manufacturing standard costing, BOMs, routings, and margin analysis. You'll act as a trusted finance business partner, supporting operational performance, pricing decisions, budgeting, and forecasting, while contributing to wider business projects and continuous improvement initiatives.
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Key Responsibilities
Management Accounting
* Prepare monthly management accounts, including P&L and detailed variance analysis
* Produce clear, insightful financial commentary against budget, forecast, and prior periods
* Support budgeting, forecasting, and rolling forecast processes
* Maintain accurate stock accounting, WIP, and cost of sales
* Analyse production material usage variances (MUC)
* Enhance management reporting, including overhead and direct labour analysis
* IFRS 15 monitoring and postings
* Support year‑end audit and statutory reporting
Manufacturing Costing & Data Integrity
* Partner closely with engineering, production, and supply chain to ensure accurate manufacturing data
* Investigate and explain manufacturing variances (materials, labour efficiency, overhead absorption)
* Calculate annual labour and overhead absorption rates
* Set up, review, and maintain Bills of Material (BOMs) and routings to ensure accurate product costing
* Support new product introduction costing and ongoing maintenance of existing products
Sales, Margin & Commercial Analysis
* Deliver detailed sales and margin analysis by product, customer, and channel
* Support pricing decisions through contribution and profitability analysis
* Identify margin improvement opportunities through cost drivers and product mix
* Control new price introductions and retrospective billing
* Provide ad hoc commercial insight to support strategic decision‑making
Business Partnering & Continuous Improvement
* Act as a key finance business partner to operations, sales, and supply chain
* Drive improvements in costing, reporting, and data accuracy
* Strengthen financial controls across manufacturing and commercial reporting
* Contribute to system, process, and finance transformation initiatives
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About You
Qualifications
* Part‑qualified or fully qualified accountant (CIMA / ACCA / ACA), or qualified by experience
Essential Experience
* Proven management accounting experience within a manufacturing environment
* Strong understanding of product costing, BOMs, routings, and variance analysis
* Commercial mindset with experience in sales and margin analysis
* Advanced Excel skills (pivot tables, lookups, data analysis)
Desirable Experience
* Exposure to standard and absorption costing
* Experience supporting pricing and customer profitability analysis
* Strong collaboration with operational and cross‑functional teams
* Continuous improvement or lean manufacturing exposure
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What You'll Bring
* High attention to detail and a strong focus on data accuracy
* Excellent analytical and problem‑solving skills
* The ability to translate complex financial data into clear commercial insight
* A proactive, improvement‑driven, and commercially minded approach
Contact for further information
Robert Half Ltd acts as an employment business for temporary positions and an employment agency for permanent positions. Robert Half is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion. Suitable candidates with equivalent qualifications and more or less experience can apply. Rates of pay and salary ranges are dependent upon your experience, qualifications and training. If you wish to apply, please read our Privacy Notice describing how we may process, disclose and store your personal data: roberthalf.com/gb/en/privacy-notice.