Controller

What's Awesome About Our Client?

• They're a Bozeman-based real estate developer building hotels, apartment communities, and master-planned neighborhoods from the ground up across multiple states.
• They hold what they build. This isn't a group that flips dirt and walks away, so the decisions they make up front are the ones you'd make if you had to live with them for years.
• Small team where almost everyone in the building is a decision maker.
• Exceptional office space with an outdoor deck, golf simulator and more.

Why This Job - Controller

Bozeman based real estate developer is looking for a Controller to join and manage the whole accounting function. This is a standalone role where you work alongside the CEO and COO to drive the business. You'll do more than close the books here. You'll build financials that drive decisions, manage the relationships with lenders, auditors and property management companies, handle the vendors, and own the function end to end.

This isn't a massive developer or PE firm where you're just a cog. Here you watch projects go from dirt through construction financing into an operating asset that pays investors. You'll inherit a well-run set of books, and you'll also take on special projects like revamping the cash flow forecasting tools.

This is a small team and hiring for culture fit is huge here. There's nowhere to hide (in a good way) and they want someone who's just as curious, positive and nice to be around as they want someone who can run their accounting.

What You'll Actually Do:

• Run the monthly construction draws. You put the draw together with the lender, get it funded, and record it, and you're the one who knows whether a project is tracking to its equity and loan budget or drifting.
• Own the books across ten-plus entities. Everything is its own special purpose entity, so you keep the intercompany clean and make sure money is sitting where it's supposed to be sitting.
• Handle the messiest stretch in development: a project coming out of construction, when you and the management company are each running a set of books until you find a clean cutoff and hand it over.
• Be the owner's eye on the operating assets. The management companies produce the monthly financials; you review them, make the adjustments they don't touch, manage the tax and insurance escrows, and calculate the asset management fees and the distributions out to equity partners.
• Build the cash flow forecast the company plans off, and work with the Director of Construction so pre-development budgets and contracts actually tie to it.
• Run point on tax and audit. You do the internal adjustments, work the review with the outside firm, track and pay the estimates, and quarterback the annual audits, including a few HUD ones with a hard spring deadline.

What You Bring:

• 6\+ years of accounting experience and a degree in accounting or finance. They're flexible on the specifics if the experience is there.
• A CPA is strongly preferred. It carries real weight here: their lenders have waived audit requirements because the statements get reviewed internally by a CPA. They'll still talk to strong people without one.
• Public accounting is a genuine edge, but by no means required.
• Real estate or construction accounting is a plus but honestly not required. The person leaving came out of public with none of it and picked up the draw process fine. You'll also be able to work with the outside accounting consultants if you get stuck.
• Strong Excel, and the kind of attention to detail where you go looking for the pennies. Their words, not ours. The stack is deliberately simple, QuickBooks Desktop and an AP tool that talks to it.
• Someone entrepreneurial who's fine being the only accountant in the room. There's nobody internal to ask an accounting question, so you go to the tax preparers or the auditors.

Where and How Much:

• Location: Bozeman, MT. In the office, especially early on, with some room for flexibility in the future.
• Compensation: $140,000 to $160,000 depending on what you bring, plus a discretionary bonus largely tied to project success. There is some potential to own equity in the projects down the road.
• Benefits: health insurance premium covered for you, unlimited PTO that actually gets used, the office closed Friday afternoons all summer and the full week between Christmas and New Year's, and hotel employee rates on two major brands when you travel. Currently there is no retirement plan.
• Schedule: Monday through Friday, right around 40 hours once you're settled, heavier in Q1 through tax and audit season.