Sr. Accounts Receivable Analyst

Aspire Bakeries is a North American baking company with a leadership position in specialty frozen baked goods. Formed from leading bakery companies, its innovative food portfolio includes breads, artisan breads, buns, cookies, donuts, muffins and pastries from beloved brands like La Brea Bakery®, Otis Spunkmeyer®, and Oakrun Farm Bakery®. With 13 bakeries in North America, we are committed to driving innovation, predicting upcoming consumer trends and flavors, and exceeding our customers’ expectations. Aspire Bakeries champions the values of Integrity, Ownership, Customer Focus, Creativity and Care to help us deliver on People Safety, Food Safety, Quality and Collaboration.

Active participation with leading and driving results to meet individual, team and department objectives. Includes training, identifying process improvements, proposing solutions and leading the implementation resolution(s).

Serve as subject matter expert on department processes and procedures, SAP and BI, collections and deductions

Train team members and other business users. Includes preparation of training documentation

Lead and participate with AR’s testing needs that includes SAP, Business Objects and other various testing needs

Play an integral role in company implementations to support the needs of the evolving business

Establish and maintain strong working relationships with customers and other functional groups at all levels, including executive decision makers

The ability to motivate others and lead by example with strong work ethics, integrity, teamwork and a positive attitude

Keep management apprised of unusual or non-standard issues and escalate when appropriate

Other tasks/projects as needed

Overall responsibility for a complex receivable portfolio including:

• Independently plan, analyze and carry out collection of past due accounts on own portfolio while collaborating with team members to drive issues through resolution to maximize cash flow and proactively communicate to the stream
• Identify deviations from policy and practice and propose and implement remediation
• Conduct timely research, analysis and decision making for resolution of deductions and disputed items, short/over-payments on own portfolio while serving as subject matter expert and assisting team members
• Reconcile accounts in timely manner, analysis of transactions and initiate credits and adjustments to accounts, as well as accurate clearing of corresponding credits and debits
• Identify and resolve order-to-cash root cause issues that impede invoicing, collections and deduction resolution. Includes initiating and driving cross functional resolutions.
• Review orders on credit hold and personally take appropriate action to ensure delivery dates met
• Initiate and maintain complete, accurate and updated records of contacts, collection activities and account reconciliations
• Financial risk analysis to update credit limits within level of authority and/or make recommendations to management

Experience and Skill Requirements

• BA/BS in related discipline highly preferred or equivalent experience
• Minimum 5-8 years high volume collections and deductions experience (preferably trade spend); food industry highly desirable
• Exceptional Microsoft Office skills are required, including pivot tables, vlookups, formula building and sorting of data
• SAP experience required
• Positive attitude and strong work ethic
• Superior organizational skills and the ability to manage tasks in a very ambiguous environment
• Strategic thinker with attention to details without losing focus of the “big picture”
• Proven ability to work autonomously in a fast paced, ever-changing environment with the ability to stay focused and quickly achieve closure
• Excellent problem solving and negotiation skills required.
• Proven ability to own complex portfolios
• Communication skills require strong business writing skills and the ability to effectively articulate with discussions, proposals and negotiations in a persuasive manner
• Ability to lead and drive initiatives (split out as separate line item from above bullet)
• Highly motivated self-starter who can work well independently and in a team environment
• Must have a flexible schedule and be willing to put in extra time as needed to meet objectives

Aspire Bakeries is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.