What are the responsibilities and job description for the Contract/Grant Compliance Administrator/Cost Accountant position at OptiPro Systems?
POSITION SUMMARY
$63,000 - $75,000 Annually
The Contract/Grant and Compliance Administrator is responsible for the full lifecycle of business contracts alongside department managers, including drafts, negotiating, reviewing, and managing agreements to ensure compliance with legal and company policies, while safeguarding the organization’s interests by identifying and mitigating potential risks through the contract process.
Cost Accountant will implement and maintain the accounting and financial reporting systems necessary to provide management with the information required to effectively monitor the Company’s performance and to report that performance against approved budgets. Ensure the accuracy and adequacy of all accounting systems including revenues, costs, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll and general ledger systems. To advise and assist management and business unit managers with the development and implementation of the annual budget. Perform a monthly close to provide timely reporting and accountability for operational and financial results.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
CONTRACT/GRANT MANAGEMENT AND COMPLIANCE:
- Prepare, review, and revise legal contracts and agreements, ensuring accuracy and clarity of terms and conditions
- Work alongside department managers to negotiate contracts with clients, vendors, and other stakeholders to achieve favorable terms for the company.
- Oversee the entire contract lifecycle, from initiation to execution, renewal, and termination, including tracking key dates and milestones.
- Identify potential risks within contracts, assessing their impact, and developing mitigation strategies.
- Ensure all contracts adhere to relevant laws, regulations, and company policies.
- Maintain accurate records of all contracts, including amendments, communications, and related documentation
- Collaborate with internal teams to facilitate smooth contract execution.
- Investigating and resolving contract disputes that may arise during the contract term.
- Create and update standard contract templates aligned with company guidelines.
- Ensure that budgets are established for all customer and internal projects.
- Monitor actual costs on all projects on a monthly basis and report variances against budgets.
- Meet with Project Managers for customer projects and provide the Project Status Report for the current month and project to date. Review their Estimates to Complete and evaluate the current and projected impact on budgeted gross margin.
- Meet with Department Managers for each internal project monthly to review the status of accumulated costs for the current month and project to date. Report on the status of actual costs compared to the budgets.
- Assist in the administration of SBIR projects by preparing proposals, ICS reports, provisional rate reports, monthly invoices, and project budgets/forecasts.
- Collaborate with Financial Controller and Research & Development (R&D) for data and program description needs
- Provides daily monitoring of grants and contracts to ensure expenses are being paid according to contracts
- Assists with pre-award applications and may assist with locating sources of outside funding
- Lend expertise to refine budget justifications and various components of applications
- Submit proposals by designated deadlines
- Navigate internal and external proposal application processes & electronic proposal systems to ensure successful proposal submission
- Ensure that internal controls are adequate to safeguard assets and proprietary information and that financial transactions are properly documented.
- Monitor and keep Financial Controller and relevant department managers apprised of post-award activity including expenditures, budgets, and effort, to ensure compliance for grants and/or contracts
- Understanding of FAR Clauses to ensure specific provisions and requirements are incorporated into federal government contracts.
COST ACCOUNTANT:
- In conjunction with the Financial Controller, develop the goals, budgets and objectives of the OptiPro Systems Business Units and Cost Accounting function and manage the implementation of those plans.
- Develop and/or implement the planning tools required to properly and efficiently manage the flow of data required to meet the company’s accounting and financial reporting goals developed above. These include: budget and reporting systems; financial analysis tools and reports; account analysis systems; productivity reporting and tracking; and overhead and spending analysis covering direct and indirect labor, overtime and expense controls, estimates to complete, productivity rates, project management accountability reporting and subcontractor performance reporting.
- Create work orders in the system for projects based on approved requests for all effort to be performed by direct labor personnel; indirect labor personnel working on all internal projects and for all employees who are not actively charging their time to customer projects or internal projects.
- Coordinate and implement, under the direction of the Financial Controller, the instructions and planning worksheets for preparation of the annual budget. Provide analysis and support to business unit managers, department heads and operations to develop staffing schedules, cost estimates and expense budgets, capital equipment budgets and overhead rate budgets for the coming fiscal year. This planning effort begins in September to finalize the annual budget by the beginning of the budget year.
- Provide support to operations management in terms of analysis of financial performance and the translation or correlation of those results to operating performance. Track actual overhead absorption, compare to budget and identify the reasons for variances. Recommend adjustments to budgeted overhead rates when appropriate.
- Assist with the preparation of monthly and annual financial statements and supporting schedules accurately and in a timely manner. Review, analyze and report on an exception basis all significant variances from budget. Identify and disclose significant trends in revenues, gross margins, costs of sales, expenses and net income and recommend appropriate action.
- Perform the valuation of the physical inventories and reconciliation of the physical inventories to the accounting records. Working with operations personnel, identify areas with weak controls, investigate the adjustments required and recommend corrective actions.
- Monitor actual departmental costs for the business units against budgets and investigate variances. Ensure that programs and expenses are utilized effectively.
- Maintain a high level of communications between the Cost Accounting function and all operating departments to ensure that all information required to properly respond to information needs and control staffing costs and operating expenses is available and reviewed on a regular basis.
CONTRACT/GRANT MANAGEMENT SKILL
- Strong Negotiation: Ability to effectively negotiate terms and conditions to achieve mutually beneficial agreements.
- Legal Acumen: Understand relevant legal principles and contract law
- Attention to detail: Meticulous review of contracts to identify potential issues and inconsistencies
- Communication: Clear and concise written and verbal communications to convey complex information
- Analytical: Ability to analyze contract terms and assess potential risks
- Project Management: Effectively manage multiple contracts and timelines simultaneously
- Collaboration: building strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders to facilitate contract execution
Mathematical Skills
- Ability to work with mathematical concepts and conversions
- Ability to work with statistical data and apply concepts such as whole numbers and fractions, ratios and proportions and work with measurement devices
- Ability to work with and convert units of operational measurement and convert those units to dollars
- Ability to identify and analyze trends
- Ability to develop overhead rates, apply and project overhead rates and monitor the impact of both spending and volume on overhead rates.
Other Skills and Abilities
- Technical experience in financial reporting and accounting in a high-tech production environment
- Production industry knowledge, including understanding of all cost centers in an operation including product costing, overhead absorption and pricing practices
- The ability to train, motivate and develop a highly effective cost accounting department.
- A commitment to success
- Significant experience with management planning and goal setting
- High level of ability with financial computer applications, database, spreadsheets and other analysis tools
- Excellent organizational and communication skills
- Ability to deal tactfully with human issues in both subordinates, peers and particularly customers
- Ability to create and maintain cooperative team building relationships within the organization
- Demonstrated ability to tactfully handle difficult situations
- Consistently demonstrate the ability to recognize and respond to changing priorities
- Ability to identify strengths and weaknesses in others and shift responsibilities to take advantage of strengths and develop weaknesses
- Ability to analyze trends and respond to those trends
- Ability to meet deadlines and work under pressure
- Advanced project management skills
Reasoning Ability:
- Ability to handle multiple and changing priorities concurrently
- Ability to work with practical problems and deal with a variety of variables
- Ability to interpret instructions furnished in written, oral, diagram or schedule form
- Ability to direct the emphasis and direction of others and groups in an orderly fashion
- Ability to identify critical issues and recommend appropriate solutions
Work Environment
While most of the Cost Accountant’s time is spent in a normal office setting, some is spent in the production department where the noise level can be loud. Working in the production area entails possible exposure to airborne particles, possible electrical shock, chemicals and fumes and working with machinery with several moving parts.
MEASUREMENT
The Cost Accountant will be evaluated to the following criteria:
- Timeliness and accuracy in preparation of the monthly Project Status Reports and projected impact on profitability.
- Ability to successfully develop and implement the annual budgeting process.
- Ability to track and report on variances from budget on a monthly basis.
- Timeliness and accuracy in the preparation of cost and spending analysis and reconciliations for all direct costs.
- Timeliness and accuracy in the valuation of the annual and periodic physical inventories
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
Additional job duties as required by managementSalary : $63,000 - $75,000