Second in our ongoing series of profiles of professional accountants
By Laura Roberts and J. K. Radomski
BREW MASTER: Adrian Joseph
CGA – Chief Financial Officer
Steam Whistle Brewing
ABOUT ME: My career in the beer industry began in Sri Lanka at a brewery, connected to Carlsberg, where I was an accountant; responsible for monitoring the profitability of our distributors.
I came to Canada in 2002, to escape political instability, which had, among other things, affected the economy and dampened career prospects.
Soon after I arrived, I joined Steam Whistle Brewing to help the owners improve their finances and grow their business. I also enrolled in the CGA program and after a year, with the help of a few exemptions, earned the designation.
HOW I DO IT: I was first hired as controller and was eventually promoted to chief financial officer as the brewery expanded. Steam Whistle began as a local Toronto brewery but can now be found in the rest of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.
My main responsibilities are the company’s finance and accounting functions but I also oversee human resources, purchasing and information technology. My daily functions include meeting with the owners and managers from other departments to discuss strategies and resource issues, overseeing the employees that I am responsible for, and dealing with government-related tax issues. They also involve reviewing cash flow and bank reconciliations, monitoring movements in foreign exchange rates, reviewing accounting and tax updates, supervising accounting staff on their various reconciliations that are performed on beer shipments to the Beer Stores and LCBOs and handling the needs of payroll.
As CFO, a lot of the work I do is focused on expanding our business. In the beer industry, a good year is revenue growth of about 2% a year. Our company is doing much better with revenue growing up to 20% a year. We are now at the point where we can finance our operations with our own equity and rarely need a bank loan. We want to grow at a profitable pace while making sure we’re still supporting our systems to facilitate that growth. So a big part of my job is closely monitoring the different departmental needs, reviewing and revising our monthly budgets, and deciding where to allocate resources based on current market conditions. I get a lot of satisfaction seeing our market share grow over time, and knowing I have actively contributed to that in some way.
MY ADVICE: If you’re interested in working as an accountant in the beer industry, the first thing you should know is that it is a business that is heavily taxed and regulated. In addition to the HST, the company is also subject to beer taxes and federal excise duties. These tax rates vary depending on the volume and also differ from province to province.
Also, sales volumes are heavily skewed towards the summer months. So you need to be adept at learning how to manage cash flow. In most cases, an organization will invest in capital equipment during the winter and early spring in anticipation of higher volumes in the summer months.
