About Gapstars
At Gapstars, we partner with some of Europe's most ambitious companies, from disruptive tech startups to established Benelux accounting firms, helping them build high-performing teams in engineering and finance.

Headquartered in the Netherlands, with talent hubs in Sri Lanka and Portugal, we are home to 300+ professionals who thrive on solving real-world challenges with modern solutions. Our teams work across domains, from networking, marketplaces, SaaS, and AI to embedded finance and accounting, delivering scalable solutions that drive meaningful outcomes.

The Role
This role goes beyond traditional month-end accounting: we're looking for someone who recognizes that accurate financial data is the foundation for meaningful business insights and strategic decision- making.

You will be responsible for the complete accounting cycle for Operations and Product activities, ensuring not only compliance with accounting standards but also that every transaction, every journal, and every reconciliation captures data in a way that enables the business to extract actionable insights. Your work will directly inform cost analysis, inventory management, product development decisions, and operational efficiency initiatives.

This role sits at the intersection of manufacturing and supply chain operations, product development, and financial reporting. Rather than simply processing transactions, you'll develop a deep understanding of how the products are made, what drives costs, and how operational activities translate into financial results. You'll work closely with Operations, Supply Chain, Product Development, and Finance teams to ensure the financial systems accurately reflect business reality.

A critical aspect of this role is collaboration with the Data & Analytics team in IT and the Purchase Ledger team (reporting to the same Director of Finance) to ensure data is captured efficiently and automation workflows generate reliable information in the right format. This allows you to focus on adding value through analysis and insights rather than spending time transforming data.

Responsibilities 
Month-end close and financial reporting

• Execute the complete month-end close process for Operations and Product activities, ensuring accuracy, completeness, and timely delivery.
• Prepare and post journal entries for parts and consumables purchases, ensuring proper period cut-off and accuracy.
• Account for bill of materials transactions including material consumption, backflush processing, and realisation in cost of sales.
• Process labour cost absorption journal entries, ensuring appropriate allocation to production.
• Account for inbound logistics (freight, duties, handling) and outbound logistics costs, ensuring proper matching to inventory movements.
• Prepare scrap journal entries, investigating variances and ensuring appropriate provisioning and cost recognition.
• Calculate and post warranty provision journal entries based on historical trends and product-specific analysis.
• Reconcile and post warranty realisation as claims are processed and costs incurred.
• Maintain and reconcile parts inventory and finished goods inventory entries, investigating and resolving discrepancies.
• Manage the Operations fixed asset register including additions, disposals, depreciation, and impairment testing.
• Account for product development cost capitalisation including labour (engineering time), third-party development costs, and supplier tooling assets.
• Maintain the tooling assets register, managing commissioning dates, useful lives, and payment schedules.

Financial controls and reconciliations

• Perform detailed balance sheet reconciliations for all Operations and Product accounts, ensuring completeness and accuracy.
• Maintain robust controls over inventory accounting, including regular reconciliation to physical counts and ERP system data.
• Review and validate bill of materials accuracy, working with Supply Chain to resolve discrepancies that impact costing.
• Ensure proper segregation of capital expenditure vs. operational expenditure for product development activities.
• Monitor fixed asset additions to ensure proper capitalisation, classification, and depreciation treatment.
• Develop and maintain controls to ensure labour cost absorption drivers remain appropriate and up to date.
• Review warranty provision adequacy periodically, updating assumptions based on actual claim experience.

Data quality and systems management

• Ensure manufacturing and product development transactions in ERP are coded accurately to enable meaningful analysis.
• Work with Operations and Supply Chain teams to ensure goods receipt notes, backflush transactions, and scrap reporting are completed accurately and timely.
• Validate that bill of materials, routing, and labour standards in the ERP system accurately reflect manufacturing reality.
• Design and implement controls to ensure financial data captured at month- end can be turned into reliable management information.
• Collaborate closely with the Data & Analytics team in IT to design automation workflows and data pipelines that generate reliable information in the right format, reducing manual data transformation effort.
• Work with the Purchase Ledger team to ensure procure-to-pay processes capture data accurately for Operations and Product activities, enabling seamless integration with manufacturing and project accounting and operational drivers.
• Identify opportunities to enhance data capture processes, improving both accounting accuracy and analytical capability through better system design and automation.
• Support the Operations Finance Analyst by ensuring month-end processes generate analytically useful data for variance analysis and project financials.

Business partnership and analysis support

• Explain complex manufacturing cost movements to stakeholders in clear, accessible language.
• Investigate significant variances in material consumption, labour absorption, variable and fixed costs, providing root cause analysis.
• Support product development teams by clearly explaining how development costs flow through capitalisation to eventual amortisation.
• Provide insights on inventory movements, highlighting obsolescence risks, slow-moving items, and working capital impacts.
• Collaborate with the Operations Finance Analyst to ensure alignment between accounting data and operational metrics.
• Participate in process improvement initiatives, ensuring financial implications are properly understood and accounted for.

Audit and compliance

• Support the general accounting team during external audit processes, providing detailed documentation and explanations for Operations and Product balances within your areas of responsibility.
• Ensure compliance with accounting standards for all Operations and Product accounting.
• Maintain comprehensive working papers documenting month-end processes, judgements, and calculations.
• Respond to internal control recommendations, implementing improvements to accounting processes and controls.