Finance Cost Controller
About the company
This is a key commercial finance role within a growing, operationally focused business with an ambition to improve performance, strengthen decision-making and maximise profitability. The organisation is investing in better insight, tighter cost control and leaner ways of working to support sustainable growth and ensure resources are directed where they create the greatest value. The successful candidate will join a business that values commercial challenge, data-led decisions and continuous improvement across all areas of spend.
About the role
The Finance Cost Controller will take ownership of business-wide cost control, providing clear, timely and commercially focused insight into spend, efficiency, margin and profitability. Working closely with senior leaders, finance colleagues and operational budget holders, the role will help the business understand where money is being spent, why costs are moving and where efficiency or margin improvement opportunities exist.
This is a proactive, forward-looking role suited to someone who enjoys getting underneath the numbers, challenging assumptions and turning analysis into practical action. The Cost Controller will support growth plans, budgeting, forecasting and strategic decision-making by building a clear view of cost performance and ensuring that financial insight leads to measurable improvements in profitability.
Key responsibilities
- Own the cost reporting cycle across all functions and cost centres, ensuring leaders have a clear and consistent view of performance.
- Prepare regular cost reporting, commentary and analysis that highlights key movements, emerging risks, opportunities and profit impact.
- Produce variance analysis against budget, forecast and prior year, explaining the underlying drivers and recommending appropriate action.
- Develop insight into cost per unit, operational cost drivers and wider unit economics to support better commercial decisions.
- Model the financial impact of cost changes, growth plans, pricing decisions, investment opportunities and what-if scenarios.
- Support the annual budgeting and periodic forecasting processes, working with budget holders to build realistic, robust and strategically aligned cost plans.
- Challenge spend, assumptions and business cases in a constructive and commercially disciplined way.
- Identify savings, efficiency and margin improvement opportunities, quantify the benefit and track delivery through to the P&L.
- Strengthen controls around commitments, purchase orders, spend approvals, accruals, prepayments and cost data integrity.
- Review processes and reporting methods, identifying where better use of data, automation and leaner ways of working can improve efficiency.
- Build strong relationships with operational and non-finance colleagues, becoming a trusted point of contact for cost insight and commercial challenge.
- Present clear findings and recommendations to managers and senior leaders, ensuring financial insight is understood and acted upon.
Essential skills and knowledge
- Qualified accountant, ideally CIMA, ACCA or ACA, or suitably qualified by experience with strong relevant cost control expertise.
- Strong cost and management accounting experience, ideally gained in a large, multi-site, retail, service-led or operationally complex business.
- Excellent commercial awareness, with the ability to connect cost performance to growth, strategy, margin and profitability.
- Confident producing management information, variance analysis, forecasts, budgets and cost commentary for senior stakeholders.
- Strong analytical skills, with the ability to work confidently with large data sets and turn detail into clear insight.
- Advanced Excel skills and experience of recognised ERP systems, preferably including IFS or similar.
- High level of accuracy, attention to detail and ownership of data quality.
- Strong communication and influencing skills, with the confidence to challenge assumptions and explain financial information to non-finance colleagues.
- Continuous improvement mindset, with the ability to simplify processes, strengthen controls and support leaner ways of working.
- Resilient, proactive and hands-on, with the ability to manage competing priorities and deliver insight to agreed deadlines.
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