Commercial Finance Manager
$30,000–$36,000 year
On-siteJohannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Job Summary
Own the weekly financial truth by maintaining a rolling 13-week cash-flow forecast, producing monthly management accounts, and delivering a concise weekly Finance Command Report covering cash, margin, and key variances. Build and maintain annual budgets and rolling revenue, cost, and profit forecasts while analyzing gross and contribution margins across all principal channels. Reconcile stock records, track labour expenditure, and ensure sales payouts and VAT positions are fully reconciled to identify financial leakage and bottlenecks. Support the Founder and leadership team with financial analysis for new products, marketing investments, and operational decisions to drive faster, better commercial choices. Work directly with operations, demand planning, and external accountants to improve processes and inform strategic planning in a rapidly growing food brand.
Required Qualifications
- Strong experience in management accounting or commercial finance, including preparing management accounts
- Strong understanding of profit and loss, balance sheets and cash flow, and experience building and maintaining cash-flow forecasts
- Advanced Excel or Google Sheets skills, with experience in budgeting, forecasting and variance analysis
- Ability to analyse gross margin, contribution margin and operational costs, and confidence working with large volumes of transaction and operational data
- Strong reconciliation and financial-control skills, and the ability to explain financial information to non-finance colleagues
- Commercially Curious – You naturally want to understand what sits behind the numbers, not just report that they changed
- Accurate & Detail-Focused – You are rigorous with reconciliations and financial control, yet comfortable zooming out to higher-level commercial analysis
- Proactive & Independent – You are calm and dependable in a fast-moving environment and follow issues through until they are resolved
- A Clear Communicator – You can explain financial information simply to non-finance colleagues and are confident challenging assumptions and asking difficult questions
- Commercial Rather Than Purely Technical – You care about how products are physically made and are genuinely interested in operations and production
- A Builder, Not a Waiter – You are willing to improve imperfect processes rather than waiting for a perfect system, and comfortable working directly with a Founder
- The role is initially structured around three days per week (part-time, hybrid, based in Reading)
Desired Qualifications
- ACCA, CIMA or ACA qualified, part-qualified or qualified by experience
- Experience within FMCG, food manufacturing, ecommerce, retail or a stock-based business
- Experience with Shopify, Amazon or marketplace businesses, and understanding of inventory accounting and product costing
- Familiarity with Unleashed, Xero or similar accounting and inventory systems
- Experience analysing marketing spend, customer acquisition costs and channel profitability, or supporting a manufacturing or production operation
- Experience working in a founder-led or rapidly growing business
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