Manufacturing Controller

Controller Services for Manufacturers

A blended gross margin is a comfortable average of the products that make money and the ones you'd stop making if you could see them clearly. A controller builds the cost accounting that pulls them apart and reviews the variances — so you quote and price on the real number, not the factory-wide guess.

Cost accounting is the review that pays for itself

Without real cost accounting — material, labor, and overhead absorbed properly by product — you're quoting new work off a number that applies to no actual part you build. A controller sets up standard costs, reviews them against actuals each close, and surfaces the variances, so pricing and product decisions run on each line's real economics.

Inventory is the other discipline. Absorption, turns, and WIP valuation decide whether cash is working or sitting on a shelf, and whether your margin is real or an accounting artifact. A controller keeps it honest month to month.

What a controller adds over a bookkeeper

A bookkeeper records the transactions. A controller makes them right and turns them into a reviewed package: product-line margins, standard-vs-actual variance analysis, inventory and absorption discipline, and a close you can run pricing decisions on.

Across multiple product lines or plants, standardized reporting lets you compare them fairly and catch the line quietly running negative before it hides inside a healthy total.

How Kaizen runs it

We sit on top of your bookkeeping — ours or yours — and run a documented monthly close on the same date every month. Cost and inventory get reviewed so variances surface while you can still act on them.

Then the improvement part we're named for: each close the costing gets sharper and the review catches more before it reaches you. Controller judgment without the salary or the eventual two-week notice.

What's included

Reviewed monthly financials with a documented, same-date close
Standard-vs-actual cost review with variance analysis
True gross margin by product line
Inventory, absorption, and WIP valuation discipline

Turns and capacity-utilization reporting
Purchase-price and material-cost variance watch
Standardized reporting across product lines and plants
Oversight of your bookkeeper or bookkeeping team — a second set of senior eyes

New engagements usually begin with the 1-2-3 CFO™ Reset: Month 1 clean and set up real cost accounting, Month 2 stand up product-line margin and variance review, Month 3 systems and a budget.

Pricing

$3,000–6,000/moscoped to product lines, plants, and complexity · no contract

~$120K+/yrwhat a full-time cost-accounting controller costs fully loaded — if you can find one

One hire, one riskan in-house controller who needs managing and takes your costing knowledge when they leave

Team + reviewcontroller oversight plus a bookkeeping team and costing that holds up

Straight answers

We have a bookkeeper. Why a controller?

A bookkeeper records; a controller builds the cost accounting, reviews variances, and produces product-line margin you can price on. Many manufacturers keep their bookkeeper and add us for the costing layer.

Can you build real product-line costing?

Yes — standard costs, actuals, and variance analysis, reviewed each close, so you know margin by product rather than a blended factory number. It usually changes how you quote.

Our inventory is a mess. Fixable?

That's usually Month 1 — valuation, absorption, and WIP get cleaned up, then the close keeps them honest so margin stops being an accounting artifact.

One simple product. Overkill?

Possibly, and we'll tell you. A good bookkeeper and a CPA may be enough until multiple product lines and real inventory make cost accounting worth it.

Free 20-minute books assessment

We'll show you the five things we'd fix first in your books — useful whether you hire us, hire someone, or do neither.

Talk to Sales

Or call us directly: +1 786 789 0969