Financial Controller

SUMMARY:
The Financial Controller is responsible for managing the company's financial operations, ensuring accurate financial reporting, maintaining strong internal controls, overseeing budgeting and forecasting, managing cash flow, and ensuring compliance with South African financial and tax legislation. Within a meat processing environment, the role also focuses heavily on production costing, inventory management, yield analysis, and profitability across the processing operation.
Key Duties and Responsibilities
Financial Management

• Prepare monthly, quarterly, and annual financial statements.
• Manage the month-end and year-end closing processes.
• Ensure accurate general ledger reconciliations.
• Produce management accounts and financial reports.
• Analyse financial performance and provide recommendations to management.
• Monitor company profitability and financial health.

• Calculate production costs and cost of sales.
• Monitor processing costs, labour costs, overhead allocations, and factory efficiencies.
• Analyse carcass yields, production variances, and waste.
• Develop and maintain standard costing models.
• Review product margins and profitability.
• Identify cost-saving opportunities throughout production.

• Monitor raw material, packaging, work-in-progress, and finished goods inventory.
• Ensure accurate stock valuations.
• Investigate stock variances and losses.
• Work closely with warehouse and production teams.
• Assist with regular stock counts and audits.
• Ensure FIFO principles are correctly applied where appropriate.

• Prepare annual budgets.
• Develop financial forecasts.
• Monitor departmental expenditure.
• Analyse budget variances.
• Provide recommendations to improve financial performance.

• Monitor daily cash flow.
• Manage working capital.
• Forecast cash requirements.
• Assist with banking relationships.
• Ensure supplier payments are managed efficiently.

• Prepare monthly management reports.
• Produce KPI dashboards.
• Report on:
• Gross Profit
• Operating Profit
• Factory efficiency
• Production costs
• Inventory levels
• Labour costs
• Waste percentages
• Yield analysis
• Sales margins

• Ensure compliance with:
• IFRS (where applicable)
• South African tax legislation
• VAT regulations
• PAYE
• SARS requirements
• Companies Act
• Coordinate external audits.
• Prepare audit schedules.
• Maintain internal financial controls.

• Review payroll journals.
• Ensure payroll reconciliations are accurate.
• Monitor labour cost percentages.
• Ensure statutory deductions are correctly processed.

• Supervise finance staff.
• Train and mentor finance personnel.
• Allocate workloads.
• Conduct performance reviews.
• Develop finance department procedures.

• Analyse profitability by:
• Product
• Customer
• Department
• Processing line
• Prepare financial models for management decisions.
• Support pricing strategies.
• Evaluate capital expenditure proposals.

• Maintain strong financial controls.
• Improve financial processes.
• Reduce financial risk.
• Monitor fraud prevention measures.
• Ensure segregation of duties.

POSITION INFO:
Minimum Qualifications Bachelor's Degree in Accounting, Finance, or Financial Management. Completed SAICA or SAIPA articles is advantageous. Professional qualification such as CA(SA), CIMA, or ACCA is highly advantageous. Experience Required 5-8 years' experience in a financial management or financial controller role. Experience within: Meat processing Food manufacturing FMCG Manufacturing Agricultural processing Strong experience in production costing and inventory management. Experience working with ERP systems. Experience managing finance teams. Technical Skills Advanced Microsoft Excel. ERP systems (e.g. SAP, Syspro, Sage X3, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or similar). Cost accounting. Financial modelling. Budgeting and forecasting. Inventory costing. Management reporting. Financial analysis. VAT and tax compliance. Strong knowledge of IFRS and South African accounting standards.