Crew Accounting LLC Controller Remote · Full time Company website

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Anchored in Santa Monica, California, with crewmates across the U.S., Crew Finance is your beacon in the financial storm. Our team of seasoned finance and accounting professionals specializes in navigating the complexities of startups and high-growth businesses. With Crew Finance, you're not just on-board—you're charting a course for success.

You know what COGS should look like for a premium snack, beauty or apparel brand. You’ve untangled a trade spend deduction before most people have finished their morning coffee. And you’d genuinely rather talk about a DTC brand’s inventory than dig into another SaaS ARR schedule. Keep reading.

This Role Is For You If…

You’ve done real accounting - month-end close, inventory reconciliations, P&L reviews - and you’ve done it for brands that make physical things people actually buy. You’ve maybe even picked up a client’s product at a Whole Foods or Erewhon and felt a small, quiet sense of pride.

You like the chaos-to-clarity journey. Early-stage founders are brilliant at building brands and usually terrible at financial infrastructure. That gap doesn’t frustrate you, it’s the part of the job you find genuinely satisfying to fix. You’re principled about accounting and pragmatic about implementation. You’ve learned when to enforce and when to sequence.

You want to work across a portfolio of interesting, fast-moving consumer brands, not one enterprise client with five layers of approvals. You want variety. You want to matter. You want to know what your clients sell and actually care.

If that sounds like you, we might be your people.

What You’ll Actually Do

As Controller at Crew Finance, you own the financial operations and reporting for a portfolio of early-stage consumer brands. These are not clients with mature finance teams and established processes. They have big ambitions, lean infrastructure, and founders who are juggling seventeen things at once. Your job is to be the most reliable thing in their financial universe.

The Month-End Machine

• Own the full close: revenue, expenses, GL reconciliations, accruals, and financial statements — on time, every month
• Manage a team of domestic and international accountants across your client portfolio
• Maintain GAAP compliance and accrual-basis accounting without making it everyone’s problem
• Oversee billing, AP/AR, inventory costing, and revenue recognition for each client

CPG-Specific Work (The Real Stuff)

• Manage inventory accounting: costing partnership with our clients portfolio, write-offs, and landed cost treatment
• Handle trade spend and promotional accounting — accruals, chargebacks, deduction management, retailer compliance
• Build and maintain COGS models that actually reflect how a product brand operates
• Support cash flow forecasting for inventory-heavy businesses where timing is everything

Founder Support

• Translate financial information for founders who are experts in their product, not their P&L
• Be the person who tells them what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear

Systems & Infrastructure

• Evaluate and implement financial tools appropriate to each client’s stage — QBO, NetSuite, Xero, Bill.com, Shopify
• Build the processes that don’t exist yet; document them so they survive when things scale
• Foster internal controls that add real protection without adding bureaucracy that kills momentum

What We’re Looking For

The CPG experience is non-negotiable. The startup instincts are what make you exceptional.

The Foundation (Required)

• Deep CPG accounting experience: inventory, COGS, trade spend, deductions, and promotional accounting
• 5+ years of progressive accounting experience, ideally across multiple clients or companies
• Strong command of US GAAP — revenue recognition, inventory valuation
• Proficiency with QBO, NetSuite, Xero, and the startup tool stack (Bill.com, Gusto, Shopify)
• Bachelor’s in business or accounting; CPA preferred and genuinely valued

The Mindset (What Makes You Right for This)

• You’ve worked with early-stage founders and understand that “we’ve been doing it this way” is both a red flag and a completely understandable reality
• You bring order to ambiguous situations without making people feel judged for the mess they’re in
• You can hold the line on what matters and let go of what doesn’t — and you know the difference
• You’re curious about the brands you serve. You want to know what they sell, who their customer is, and why it matters
• You can manage multiple client engagements without dropping anything, and you’re honest when capacity is a constraint

The ideal candidate has probably walked into a grocery store, spotted a client’s product on the shelf, and felt something. That’s the job.

Why Crew

• Fractional work means exposure to dozens of consumer brands across stages, categories, and business models. Your brain will not get bored
• A team of smart, collaborative people who care about doing right by clients — and each other
• The opportunity to build something real; this role has room to grow as Crew grows
• Remote-first, with a culture that trusts you to manage your time and do excellent work
• Clients that are genuinely cool — the kind you’ll actually tell people about at dinner

If this sounds like the role you didn’t know you were waiting for, we’d love to hear from you.