Cost Accounting and Pricing Manager ( Food Manufacturing )

Title: Cost Accounting and Pricing Manager ( Food Manufacturing )

Location: Elgin Illinois

Shift(s): 8a-5p

Internal/External posting:

AI Applicant Screening used:

Salary Range: $130,000-$140,000

Bonus Eligibility: Discretionary, Not Guaranteed

POSITION SCOPE:

The Cost Accounting and Pricing Manager leads financial analysis, standard product costing, pricing models, and product-line profitability strategies. This role bridges financial reporting, commercial sales, and shop-floor production by overseeing data synchronization between NetSuite ERP and Nulogy Shop Floor / Co-Pack systems. The manager identifies margin-improvement opportunities, evaluates pricing strategies, tracks manufacturing variances, and delivers SKU and customer-level profitability analysis to maximize overall business margins.

REPORTS TO: VP of Financial Planning and Analysis ( FP&A)

ESSENTIAL ACCOUNTABILITIES:

Product Costing Management:

• Manage product BOM and establish and update standard costs for raw ingredients, packaging, and labor in NetSuite and Nulogy.

• Analyze daily and monthly manufacturing variances, focusing heavily on direct and indirect labor variances, material variances, line productivity, yields, and scrap across all assigned locations.
• Partner with regional plant production managers to identify root causes of yield variances using Nulogy real-time manufacturing logs.
• Audit and make recommendations to refine and optimize product formulations, bills of materials (BOMs), and processing routings.
• Analyze and understand indirect manufacturing costs and capacity utilization for cost allocation purposes.

Pricing Management:

• Develop, maintain, and approve data-driven customer and product pricing models for new and existing product introductions and custom co-packing requests.

• Analyze the financial impact of raw material and ingredient commodity price fluctuations on existing product pricing, including customer and SKU purchase price variance (PPV) true-ups.
• Provide financial models and margin impact analysis to the VP of FP&A during customer RFPs and contract negotiations.
• Review and monitor customer and vendor agreements to ensure the commercial terms are consistent with pricing models and invoicing.

Profitability Management:

• Lead comprehensive SKU profitability analysis to identify low-margin or loss-making product lines.

• Conduct customer profitability analysis, evaluating net margins after factoring in new material and indirect costs.
• Deliver variable contribution margin and gross margin performance reports.
• Maintain and prepare management reporting that sets forth informative KPI’s at the customer and SKU level and bridges those results to the company’s budget and pricing models.
• Identify margin variances and work with sales, operations, and supply chain personnel to take corrective action.
• Support the VP of FP&A in preparing the multi-facility annual manufacturing budget and quarterly corporate forecasts.

Additional Key Responsibilities:

ERP System Oversight and Maintenance:

• Serve as the finance owner for data alignment between NetSuite (financial sub-ledger) and Nulogy (production execution) across multiple plants.

• Oversee daily/weekly inventory reconciliations between NetSuite and Nulogy to eliminate multi-site inventory variances.
• Audit Nulogy production logs across facilities to ensure accurate consumption of raw ingredients, packaging material, and labor routing steps.

Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field.

• Required: 5–7 years of progressive experience in cost accounting, pricing, or commercial financial analysis.
• Required: Experience working directly within a food manufacturing, beverage, or perishable goods environment.
• At least 1–2 years of experience in a supervisory, team-lead, or project-management capacity.

Location & Travel Requirements

• Required: Ability to report on-site daily to the Elgin, IL facility.
• Ability to occasionally travel to regional manufacturing facilities as required.

Certifications

• Preferred: Certified Public Accountant (CPA) or Certified Management Accountant (CMA).

Technical Skills:

• Preferred: Hands-on experience working with NetSuite ERP and Nulogy software.

• Advanced Excel capabilities (macros, power query, complex formulas for price/volume/mix analysis).
• Experience building data visualizations for plant operations and sales margins in Power BI or Tableau.

Interpersonal Skills:

• Ability to present complex financial and pricing concepts to executive teams, plant operations, and corporate sales teams.

• Self-motivated leader comfortable handling large, unstructured production and commercial datasets across multiple sites.
• Strong attention to detail regarding yield calculations, product shelf-life risk, and customer contract terms.