Senior Financial Analyst

Position Title: Senior Financial Analyst

Department: Finance

Reports to: Chief Financial Officer

FLSA Status: Exempt

Work Arrangement: On-site, Newport, Minnesota

Compensation: $90,000 - $120,000

Position Summary:

The Senior Financial Analyst is a strategic finance partner responsible for translating product costing, pricing, production, inventory, and enterprise data into actionable insights that strengthen margins, cash flow, operating efficiency, and investment decisions. Reporting to the Chief Financial Officer, the role partners with operations and production leaders to improve costing accuracy, identify performance and production variances, evaluate capacity and resource utilization, and support decisions on product mix, process improvement, inventory, and capital investment. The role also advances scalable reporting and automation and serves as a key Finance workstream leader during ERP implementation, with a defined opportunity to progress into a Finance Manager role.

Purpose:

Supports business strategy by delivering accurate product costing, pricing analysis, and financial insights that improve margins, cash flow, operating efficiency, and investment decisions.

Key Activity Overview:

Product Costing:

• Lead and coordinate accurate costing across product lines and sites.
• Prepare unit-cost analyses and recommendations, communicate findings to management, and support sound pricing, margin, and operating decisions.
• Understanding of accrual accounting, activity based costing and standard costing approaches.

Operations & Production:

• Analyze production, capacity, resource utilization, inventory, and shipping performance to improve efficiency and margins.
• Trend analysis of positive and negative activities’ effects on business operations.
• Works closely with key managers to understand production, sales, inventory and shipping activities to make accurate and timely analysis.

Planning & Investment:

• Model strategic scenarios and assess ROI for process improvements, asset decisions, and capital investments.
• Support Budget cycle and demand forecasting processes for future production requirements.
• Articulate results of financial analysis, influence business thinking, and help ensure business results are attained.

Reporting & Analytics:

• Integrate enterprise data, develop management reporting, identify trends, and automate recurring analytics.
• Perform costing and input analysis, develop insights and analytics into production performance and forecasting outlook.
• Help define and provide new insights into financial processes in order to streamline activities and drive new/current analytics that support future growth of the company.

ERP & Process Improvement:

• Lead the Finance ERP workstream and strengthen scalable financial and operational processes.
• Partner with IT/IS to integrate and organize data from multiple sources, develop management reporting, and automate data extraction, report processing, and distribution where practical.
• Strong understanding of ERP implementations or configuration and artificial intelligence.

Business Partnership:

• Translate analysis into actionable recommendations, influence decisions, and train stakeholders to use financial data effectively. Collaborate with other financial analysts and department teams.
• Support in evaluating pricing performance and recommend actions affecting pricing, product mix, margins, and cash flow.
• Perform additional financial analysis as business needs arise, including inventory reporting, valuation, and return-on-investment evaluations for asset-management decisions.

Required Experience and Background:

• Five to Seven (5-7) years’ experience in financial analysis, production variances and product costing; nursery experience preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, or a related field required; master’s degree preferred.
• Must have standard costing (activity-based costing) methodology experience and worked in manufacturing environment.
• Preferred experience in ERP implementation.

Skills and Competencies:

• Advanced knowledge of mathematics, statistics, and financial guidelines.
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and experience with ERP systems and Power BI.
• Ability to analyze complex information and translate it into clear recommendations and practical business actions.
• Strong business and financial acumen, and excellent attention to detail.
• Ability to prepare financial reports and give recommendations based on available data.
• Excellent communication, including writing, speaking and active listening.

Physical Requirements and Work Environment:

This role is primarily office-based at the Newport, Minnesota location, with occasional travel to other company locations. The employee must be able to sit, stand, walk, communicate, use a computer, review information and documents, and move throughout office and operational areas as needed.

Disclaimer: This job description reflects the general nature and level of work expected. Duties and responsibilities may be adjusted at any time based on operational needs. The company reserves the right to revise the role in alignment with business priorities.