Distribution Accountant

About Kerry

Kerry is the world's leading taste and nutrition company for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Every day we partner with customers to create healthier, tastier and more sustainable products that are consumed by billions of people across the world. Our vision is to be our customers' most valued partner, creating a world of sustainable nutrition. A career with Kerry offers you an opportunity to shape the future of food while providing you opportunities to explore and grow in a truly global environment.

About the role

The Distribution Accountant is responsible for managing freight costs across 45+ manufacturing and warehousing sites across Europe.

 

In essence all distribution costs must be managed effectively, by assembling, gathering and disseminating data from various sources both internal and external. This data must be formulated into performance reports that support and enable effective decision making and risk management across Supply Chain and the whole business.

Key responsibilities

Support the Financial Reporting Process:

•  Reporting the weekly dashboard & creating weekly FI journals for posting

•  Monitor and review vendor accruals, PO utilization and workflow progress throughout the month

•  Responsible for forecasting the month end outbound distribution charge per business in the flash report & circulating it to businesses

•  Managing the month end outbound distribution reporting process using the dashboard that entails creating journals, freight assessment percentages and OLAP/AFO FIN-I-02s

•  Responsible for ensuring the integrity of the customer billing process throughout the month but particularly for the material ledger close at month end

•  Responsible for ensuring the integrity of vendor accrual process throughout the month

•  Support the clean close-off of AR, AP, ICMS and material ledgers at month end

•  Reconciliation of P+L to AFO and posting of FIN-I-02s where required at month end

•  Compile and ensure the accuracy of annual budgets / forecasts / projections

•  Ensure timely and accurate closing of all annual audit queries at year end

Support GBS Freight Activities:

•  Co-ordinate the monthly outbound freight requisition and purchase order process across Europe, ensuring all sites are active at the start of each month

•  Amend or delete all transport requisitions and POs as/when required

•  Post manual GRNs as and when required for non-shipment charges

•  Manage the vendor invoicing process to achieve optimal cashflow, balance sheet accruals and first-time pass rates

•  Act as touchpoint for all inbound, outbound, storage and warehousing processing queries from the AP team

•  Co-ordinate payment of inbound and storage charges for the same vendors

•  Carry out regular vendor meetings to ensure optimal payment schedules, issue resolution and reduce the risks of going on stop

Procurement Finance Support:

•  Partnering with Procurement to produce financial business cases & information for both full blown service level tenders and smaller price benchmarking activities

•  Support in the evaluation of, de-risking and selection of optimal vendors, tenders and ways of working

•  Support in identifying new opportunities and tender baselining

•  Extract and build databases for ad-hoc queries

•  Act as a touchpoint to determine correct pricing structures and how they can be automated in SAP

Actual Rates Maintenance:

•  Calculate & create new rates for recent acquisitions / recently onboard sites

•  Maintain and upload using SAP mass upload templates & functionality up to date prices for existing ones as a result of new tenders

•  Maintain and manually add / change / amend / end-date outliers as required

•  Act as touchpoint for regional / global teams

•  Maintain full calendar of tender expiry dates and pricing anniversaries

•  Liaise with external stakeholders on updates, load progress & expiries 

•  Add inter-regional prices for intercompany sales to other Kerry regions

•  Maintain full calendar of tender expiry dates and pricing anniversaries

•  Liaise with external stakeholders on updates, load progress & expiries

Support the Kerry Connect (SAP Implementation Project) On-boarding Processes in Supply Chain Transport:

•  Assist with compilation and validation of new actual rates for sites

•  Act as touchpoint for SAP testing of new sites

•  Key resource for creation and loading of new actual and market rates into SAP

Qualifications and skills

•  Business related Bachelors’ degree

•  Fully qualified ACCA/CIMA with 3-4yrs PQE in a commercial environment

•  Knowledge of SAP (ECC and Procurement / Supply Chain interfaces) essential

•  Advanced Excel skills

•  Knowledge of variance analysis

•  Highly analytical and highly numerate with a strong attention to detail

•  Experience in interfacing with multiple different stakeholders

•  Knowledge of, and interest in, global freight forwarding and supply chain business (advantageous)

•  Able to assemble, gather and disseminate data from various sources, both internal and external, and formulate into reports and analytics which will enable decision making and performance management across the Supply Chain  

•  Ability to add further value by proactively identifying potential opportunities or issues and assist in the implementation of both process and performance improvement

•  Execution focused through systematic problem solving and decision making

•  Customer focused, exercises sound judgement and bases decisions on facts rather than emotions

•  Acts with drive, determination and resilience