Job Description
Position Overview
Join the Follett Team where employees are valued, respected, and offered career paths throughout its many campus locations.
Follett serves over half of the students in the United States and works with 80,000 schools as a leading provider of education technology, services, and print and digital content.
We're higher education's largest campus retailer and a hub for school spirit and community as we operate nearly 1,200 local campus stores and over 1,600 virtual stores across the continent.
We take pride in the fact that for more than 140 years, we have been helping to improve people's lives by supporting a lifetime of learning and education.
The Senior Accounting Analyst will support Follett's key accounts, including the largest expenditure and inventory, and will analyze the gross margin for the company.
This role will work cross-functionally within Finance and with the Course Material, General Merchandise, Asset Protection, and Operations teams.
Performs moderately complex Inventory analyses to summarize current and projected financial position for Inventory / Rental.
Recommends methods and procedures to improve accounting processes. Responsible for ensuring accurate general ledger and related financial statements and managerial reports.
Responsibilities
Analysis / Reporting :
- Prepare and analyze the Inventory Accounting Management Dashboard and provide the management team with insight into trends.
- Performs margin analysis at the company / store level, investigates variances, and addresses any issues related to inventory and margins.
- Analyzes Markup / Markdowns journal entries, identifies inaccuracies, and processes corrections.
- Develop Received Not Invoiced Aging reporting for management.
- Responsible for extensive data analysis of the Received Not Invoiced reports.
- Responsible for analyzing the data submitted through the Inventory Adjustment Request data.
Month End Close :
- Prepare / record store-level journals related to inventory and book rental.
- Calculates year-end reserves (LIFO, Excess, and Obsolesces, etc..) by compiling and analyzing system data.
- Reconcile all assigned balance sheet accounts and perform financial statement variance analysis.
Physical Inventory / Shrink Calculation :
- Analyzes shrink (discrepancies w / inventory counts versus the general ledger) changes daily and determines the cause of significant changes.
- Review store-level shrink results to identify stores that require in-depth analysis, identify any causes of shrink, and process corrections.
- Validate various aspects of shrinkage system calculations.
- Responsible for daily, weekly, and annual shrink reports.
- Provides analytical support to stores and Loss Prevention during the physical inventory reconciliation process.
- Produces all shrink-related journal entries, including accruals and reserves.
Process Improvement :
- Recommends changes to the policy and procedures and updates as necessary based on system or company procedural changes.
- Identify areas in the department that can be moved to the offshore team and / or automated / streamlined.
- Ad-hoc analysis and flexibility to take on additional responsibilities as needed or as streamlined / automated / offshored current accountability.
- Train / Oversee the offshore team.
Special projects as assigned.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, or related field or equivalent.
- 5-7 years of general accounting experience : month-end close, reconciliations, variance analysis.
- Advanced knowledge of Excel.
- Experience reviewing and interpreting contracts is a plus.
- Experience with improving processes, identifying opportunities for automation, and having an eye for working smarter.
- Intermediate to Advanced knowledge of Access.
- Experience in the Retail Method of Accounting is a plus.
- At times during the monthly or year-end financial close, additional hours may be required.