Accounting Salary - Manager, Cost Accounting

Standard Motor Products, Inc.•Lewisville, TX

About The Position

The Cost Accounting Manager owns inventory accounting, reconciliations, reserves, standard costing, and management reporting. The role reviews supporting analyses and accounting conclusions and resolves complex issues. It works closely with Supply Chain, Procurement, Logistics, Operations, Pricing, Sales, Product Management, and Joint Ventures to translate changing product and landed costs into timely sourcing and customer pricing decisions. The position combines hands-on cost accounting with improving and scaling accounting processes. The successful candidate is expected to think independently, ask thoughtful questions, develop well-supported recommendations, and take ownership of putting ideas into action.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field.
8–10 years of substantial cost accounting experience in a manufacturing environment.
Strong knowledge of standard costing, inventory valuation, manufacturing variances, and landed-cost modeling.
Experience analyzing tariffs, duties, freight, foreign exchange, and sourcing changes for product costing and commercial pricing decisions.
Advanced proficiency with ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, or NetSuite, and with Excel.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including the ability to frame ambiguous issues, analyze financial and operational data, evaluate alternatives, and recommend practical solutions.
Ability to communicate findings clearly and build cross-functional support for action.
Strong analytical judgment, attention to detail, project ownership, and ability to manage competing priorities under tight deadlines.

Nice To Haves

Experience with remanufacturing.

Responsibilities

Lead monthly, quarterly, and annual cost accounting close activities, including journal entries, account reconciliations, and management reporting.
Manage inventory accounting for raw materials, work in process, finished goods, cores, and inventory in transit.
Maintain the standard cost system and perform new-product, quarterly, and annual standard cost roll activities.
Ensure inventory is valued consistently according to company accounting policies.
Oversee inventory reserve calculations for excess, obsolete, and slow-moving inventory, and resolve significant valuation matters.
Review inventory movement, aging, usage, and valuation trends and coordinate corrective actions with business partners.
Analyze purchase price variance, material usage, labor efficiency, overhead spending, and overhead absorption.
Validate bills of material, routings, labor rates, machine rates, overhead assumptions, and other product-cost inputs.
Investigate significant cost variances, identify root causes, and provide actionable recommendations to Finance and Operations leaders.
Prepare management reporting on plant performance, product costs, inventory turns, and manufacturing margin drivers.
Support budgeting and forecasting with current cost assumptions, operational trends, and variance explanations.
Partner with Supply Chain and IT to assess proposed and enacted tariff changes and identify affected suppliers, components, countries of origin, tariff classifications, and product families.
Quantify tariff and duty changes' effects on purchase costs, total landed cost, inventory valuation, simulated costs, gross margin, and future cost forecasts.
Provide Pricing and Sales teams with timely cost simulations identifying the amount, timing, and product-level impact of tariff-driven cost changes.
Present cost simulation results to Finance, Supply Chain, Pricing, Sales, and executive leadership.
Prepare quarterly and annual audit schedules and provide support to internal and external auditors.
Support internal controls related to inventory, costing, reserves, ERP data, and management review controls.
Participate in system implementations, acquisitions, sourcing projects, new product launches, and other strategic initiatives.
Identify opportunities to standardize, simplify, and automate cost accounting and tariff simulation processes.
Partner with Finance, Operations, Supply Chain, and IT to improve ERP functionality, data mapping, reporting, and workflow controls.
Establish documented testing procedures for system reports, cost-model inputs, data completeness, and mapping changes.
Maintain process documentation, model assumptions, approval evidence, and audit trails for material cost and pricing analyses.
Lead improvement initiatives from problem definition through implementation, adoption, and measurement of results.