Ladurée is a globally recognized French luxury maison known for its iconic macarons, pastries, chocolates, teas, and refined café and boutique experience.
Ladurée Philippines operates within the luxury hospitality and retail environment, with a strong focus on maintaining the Maison's standards while ensuring disciplined financial and operational management across all locations.
We are looking for an experienced and highly detail-oriented Internal Audit Manager to oversee internal controls, financial integrity, inventory management, operational compliance, and risk management across Ladurée Philippines.
This role is highly hands-on and will work closely with Finance, Operations, Purchasing, Inventory, Store Management, HR, and Senior Management.
Key Responsibilities1. Internal Audit & Financial Controls
- Develop and execute a comprehensive annual internal audit program for Ladurée Philippines.
- Conduct regular audits across boutiques, salons, cafés, offices, warehouses, and other operating locations.
- Review the effectiveness of financial and operational controls.
- Identify control weaknesses, financial leakage, inefficiencies, and potential risks.
- Conduct scheduled and surprise audits where appropriate.
- Ensure proper approval processes and segregation of duties are followed.
- Review transactions for accuracy, completeness, validity, and authorization.
- Monitor compliance with company policies and procedures.
- Provide practical recommendations to strengthen controls and reduce risk.
2. POS, Sales & Cash Control
- Regularly audit POS transactions and daily sales reports.
- Reconcile POS sales against cash, credit card, online payment, delivery, and other payment channels.
- Investigate cash shortages, overages, unusual transactions, and discrepancies.
- Review voids, discounts, refunds, complimentary items, cancellations, and manual adjustments.
- Monitor employee and management discounts to ensure proper authorization.
- Review daily cash collection and bank deposit procedures.
- Conduct surprise cash counts.
- Identify unusual sales patterns or transactions that could indicate errors, fraud, or misuse.
- Ensure store teams follow Ladurée Philippines cash-handling procedures.
3. Inventory & Product Control
- Conduct regular and surprise physical inventory counts.
- Reconcile physical inventory with POS and accounting records.
- Investigate inventory discrepancies and unexplained losses.
- Monitor inventory movements between boutiques, salons, warehouses, and other locations.
- Review product transfers and receiving procedures.
- Audit wastage, spoilage, breakage, expired products, staff meals, complimentary products, and write-offs.
- Monitor high-value products and products with high shrinkage risk.
- Review inventory aging and slow-moving products.
- Work closely with Operations and Finance to improve inventory accuracy and reduce product loss.
4. Food Cost & Product Usage
- Review food and beverage cost performance by location.
- Compare theoretical product consumption against actual usage.
- Investigate significant variances between theoretical and actual food costs.
- Review recipes, portioning, yields, and product usage where applicable.
- Identify excessive wastage or abnormal consumption.
- Work with Operations and Chefs to identify opportunities to improve cost efficiency while maintaining Ladurée quality standards.
5. Purchasing & Supplier Controls
- Audit the purchasing process from purchase request through payment.
- Review purchase orders, receiving reports, invoices, and payment documentation.
- Ensure purchases are properly approved and supported.
- Review supplier pricing and identify unusual price movements.
- Verify that purchases are made through approved suppliers.
- Identify duplicate invoices, duplicate payments, unauthorized purchases, and unusual supplier transactions.
- Review supplier rebates, discounts, credits, and commercial agreements where applicable.
- Work closely with Finance and Purchasing to strengthen procurement controls.
6. Imported Products & Cost Monitoring
Given Ladurée's international supply chain, the Internal Audit Manager will also monitor controls surrounding imported products and materials.
- Review landed costs of imported products and materials.
- Monitor freight, duties, customs, logistics, and other import-related charges.
- Compare expected versus actual landed costs.
- Investigate significant cost variations.
- Review inventory receiving against import documentation.
- Monitor foreign exchange impacts on imported products and materials.
- Identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary supply-chain costs and financial leakage.
7. Store & Operational Audits
Conduct regular operational audits of all Ladurée locations, including:
- Boutiques
- Cafés
- Salons
- Island counters
- Pop-up locations
- Warehouses
- Head office
Audit areas should include:
- Cash handling
- POS procedures
- Inventory
- Product receiving
- Product transfers
- Wastage
- Staff meals
- Complimentary items
- Discounts
- Opening and closing procedures
- Security procedures
- Documentation
- Purchasing
- Store expenses
- Compliance with company SOPs
8. Fraud Prevention & Investigation
- Identify potential indicators of fraud, theft, manipulation, or unauthorized activity.
- Analyze POS, inventory, purchasing, and financial data to identify unusual patterns.
- Conduct confidential investigations when requested by senior management.
- Investigate significant cash and inventory discrepancies.
- Prepare factual investigation reports with clear findings.
- Maintain strict confidentiality.
- Immediately escalate material risks or suspected fraudulent activity to senior management.
9. Ladurée Brand & SOP Compliance
- Monitor compliance with Ladurée Philippines operating procedures.
- Work with Operations to ensure that financial controls are aligned with Ladurée standards.
- Identify gaps between actual store practices and approved procedures.
- Support the implementation of new SOPs and internal controls.
- Conduct follow-up audits to ensure corrective actions have been implemented.
- Ensure audit recommendations do not compromise the luxury customer experience or Ladurée brand standards.
10. Reporting to Management
Prepare clear and commercially relevant audit reports covering:
- Key findings
- Financial impact
- Operational impact
- Risk level
- Root cause
- Recommended corrective action
- Responsible department/person
- Target completion date
- Status of remediation
Provide regular reports to the Managing Director / General Manager and Finance leadership highlighting the most important risks across the business.
Key Performance Indicators
The Internal Audit Manager will be evaluated based on:
- Reduction in cash discrepancies.
- Reduction in inventory losses and unexplained variances.
- Reduction in wastage and product leakage.
- Improvement in POS compliance.
- Improvement in purchasing controls.
- Timely completion of the internal audit plan.
- Timely resolution of audit findings.
- Reduction in recurring audit issues.
- Identification of financial leakage and cost-saving opportunities.
- Improvement in compliance with Ladurée Philippines SOPs.
- Effectiveness of fraud prevention and detection.
- Quality and timeliness of management reporting.
Qualifications & Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, or a related field.
- Minimum 5 years of experience in internal audit, external audit, financial control, or operational audit.
- Experience in F&B, hospitality, luxury retail, retail, FMCG, or multi-location businesses strongly preferred.
- CPA, CIA, or equivalent professional certification is an advantage.
- Strong knowledge of accounting, internal controls, audit procedures, and financial analysis.
- Strong Excel and data-analysis capabilities.
- Experience with POS, ERP, accounting, inventory, and procurement systems.
- Experience auditing multiple locations is highly preferred.
Personal Attributes
The successful candidate must be:
- Highly analytical and detail-oriented.
- Independent and objective.
- Honest, ethical, and discreet.
- Commercially minded.
- Comfortable investigating discrepancies.
- Confident challenging operational teams when necessary.
- Strong in communication and report writing.
- Able to work independently with minimal supervision.
- Practical and solution-oriented rather than purely administrative.
- Comfortable conducting audits in-store and in operational environments.
- Able to maintain confidentiality when dealing with sensitive financial and personnel matters.
What We Are Looking For
We are looking for someone who understands that internal audit is not simply about finding mistakes.
The Internal Audit Manager should actively help Ladurée Philippines protect its cash, inventory, profitability, reputation, and operational standards.
The successful candidate will be comfortable going into a boutique or salon, checking the cash, reviewing POS transactions, counting inventory, examining wastage, checking receiving documents, analyzing purchasing, speaking with store teams, and following a discrepancy until its root cause is understood.
The position requires someone who can balance financial discipline with the standards and sophistication expected of a luxury French Maison.
The objective is to identify risks early, prevent financial leakage, strengthen operational controls, and ensure every Ladurée location operates with the highest level of financial and operational integrity.
