Cost Accountant

Role Overview

This role is central to keeping project finances under control from kickoff to close. You will work alongside project managers and operational teams to capture costs as they happen, compare them against approved budgets, and translate financial data into clear forecasts and warnings. The goal is to catch margin erosion early, support smarter decision-making, and ensure leadership always has an accurate view of profitability across the project portfolio.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and maintain project cost structures that capture direct labour, materials, installation, procurement, and overhead components accurately for each job.
• Validate and post cost transactions in the ERP system, ensuring every expense is allocated to the correct project or cost centre in a timely manner.
• Run routine variance analysis comparing actual spending, committed costs, and forecasted totals against approved budgets; investigate anomalies and present findings to stakeholders.
• Prepare cost-to-complete estimates and rolling financial forecasts in collaboration with project managers, highlighting potential overruns and loss exposure before they escalate.
• Own month-end close activities for project costing, including inventory and work-in-progress reconciliations, manual journals, and cost of goods sold tracking.
• Produce monthly profitability reports for individual projects and consolidated dashboards that give management a portfolio-wide view of margins and budget health.
• Partner with procurement, operations, and project teams to identify cost-saving opportunities, challenge unnecessary spending, and support corrective action plans.
• Maintain the integrity of costing data within accounting systems and provide accurate documentation and support during internal and external audits.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a closely related discipline.
• CPA, ACCA, CMA, or equivalent professional certification is required, or active progress toward completing one.
• At least two years of hands-on experience in cost accounting, project cost management, or a similar analytical finance role.
• Demonstrated skill in project or product costing, inventory reconciliation, cost allocation, variance analysis, and margin monitoring.
• Comfortable working across teams, with proven ability to collaborate alongside Finance, Procurement, Operations, and Project functions.
• Strong proficiency in ERP or accounting systems and advanced Excel; experience with Zoho is a plus.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, especially when tracing cost variances to their root causes.
• Clear written and verbal communication, with the ability to present financial information to non-financial stakeholders and influence better cost behaviour.