Inventory Accounting Manager

To support all aspects of accounting, reporting and analysis for Staples Retail and North American Delivery business units' on hand inventory, excluding shrink. This includes the inventory roll-forwards and purchases, inventory turns, inactive inventory, damage expense and funding, return center inventory and return to vendor compliance, donations, disposals and obsolete inventory. Supervise staff of six accounting and analysis professionals, including two Senior Financial Analysts and four Analysts. Establish yourself as a primary internal and external Inventory Accounting and Control contact for Staples. Work with your team, the merchants, supply chain and operations to maintain inactive inventory transition strategies while monitoring gross margin and obsolescence risks. Pro-Actively identify breakdowns in the inventory exit strategy process utilizing existing reporting and meetings with key players. Manage your team of associates executing the following inactive inventory exit strategies - markdowns, liquidations, vendor returns and product donations and disposals. Oversee various vendor return programs that include the following components - product eligibility/ineligible status, maximum return levels and re-stocking fees. Play a key role in strategically managing these return programs to maximize return opportunities and minimize obsolescence exposure.Assist and direct your team to maintain and develop new value added analyses and financial models involving markdown effectiveness, margin impacts and overall product profitability. Manage the accounting, analysis, forecasting, budgeting and reporting for average inventory, damage expense, vendor damage funding, obsolescence expense and reserves, purchases, liquidations, donations and disposals. This includes the monitoring of open receivables and coordination of month end close and balance sheet reconciliations.Work with our internal an external auditors to maintain and support all Sarbanes Oxley internal control requirements ensuring complete and accurate obsolete inventory reporting. Meet with and evaluate proposals from outside liquidators.Drive enhancements to our current reporting architecture and the building of new automated data models to facilitate analyses. Manage all MS Access database maintenance within the department.Oversee the preparation and reconciliation of the month-end inventory roll-forward packages. Manage annual purchase forecast process working closely with Operations, Merchandising and Contract Accounting. Qualifications Bachelor's Degree in Economics and/or Finance/Accounting required, MBA preferred. Eight plus years accounting and financial experience in Retail industry.Supervisory experience over several employees is required.Strong analytical and organizational skills.Detailed oriented with ability to create executive summaries in actionable formats Advanced PC skills with a high proficiency in MS Access and Excel required.Ability to manage several projects at once with a strong sense of urgency. Ability to interact with all levels of management combined with excellent customer service skills.Ability to work within tight deadlines and balance workload effectively. Apply