Accounting Manager - Revenue & Capitalized Costs

About Watershed
Watershed is the enterprise sustainability platform. Companies like Airbnb, Carlyle Group, FedEx, Visa, and Dr. Martens use Watershed to manage climate and ESG data, produce audit-ready metrics for voluntary and regulatory reporting including CSRD, and drive real decarbonization. We are looking for team members who love product-building, want to work hard at a mission-oriented startup, and will collaborate with us in shaping the culture of a growing team.
We have offices in San Francisco, New York, Denver, London, Paris, Berlin, Sydney, Mexico City, and remote team members across the US and Europe. We hope that you'll be interested in joining us!
The role
We are looking for a hands-on Accounting Manager to own three key areas of our accounting operations: Revenue Accounting (ASC 606), Internally Developed Software (ASC 350-40), and Capitalized Commissions (ASC 340-40). This role will serve as the bridge between technical accounting policies (set by Technical Accounting) and day-to-day execution, translating US GAAP requirements into scalable processes across revenue, billing, GL, month-end close, reconciliations, and controls.
A key part of the opportunity is the 0-to-1/building component : you will help standardize early-stage processes and introduce automation and AI-powered workflows to reduce manual work and assist with the successful completion of our first-year audit. It is a great fit for someone who combines strong technical accounting knowledge with hands-on execution, enjoys building and improving processes in a fast-growing SaaS environment and working cross-collaboratively across the business.
What You’ll Do
1. Process Standardization, Systems & Audit Readiness
- 0-to-1 Standardization: Build and harden processes into standardized, structured workflows across contracts, revenue schedules, IDS logs, and commission tracking to establish an audit-ready foundation.
- Automation Roadmap: Partner with Accounting Systems and cross-functional accounting peers to evaluate, test, and deploy modern contract ingestion software and AI workflows.
- Audit Ownership: Serve as the primary owner for external audit deliverables across your assigned accounts, providing reviewer-ready documentation, audit evidence, and supporting schedules.

2. Core Revenue Operations & Lifecycle Management — ASC 606
- Day-to-Day Contract Ingestion & Schedule Execution: Ingest customer contracts, review commercial terms, necessary manual schedule adjustments, run monthly revenue recognition subledgers, and post core revenue entries during month-end close.
- Contract Lifecycle & Amendments: Own the operational accounting for post-signature contract events, including renewals, upsells, terminations and amendments under ASC 606.
- Non-Standard Deals: Maintain hands-on ownership of technical deal nuances that fall outside standard automated workflows, including material rights, SSP allocations, variable consideration, and custom commercial terms, partnering with Technical Accounting to keep policies aligned.
- GL Close & Flux: Reconcile revenue, deferred revenue, unbilled AR, and AR allowance accounts while managing reserve calculations and conducting period-over-period flux analysis to explain key business drivers.
- AR & Billing Alignment: Partner closely with the AR team and Deal Desk to resolve billing holdbacks, unbilled receivables, and contract modifications cleanly.
- FP&A Collaboration: Partner with FP&A to explain GAAP revenue trends and support future ARR-to-GAAP bridge analysis and revenue forecasting models as the business scales.

3. Internally Developed Software (ASC 350-40) & Capitalized Commissions (ASC 340-40)
- IDS Operations: Collaborate with Product and Engineering to track project roadmaps, evaluate development milestones against capitalization criteria in partnership with Technical Accounting, run amortization schedules, and post GL entries.
- Commission Amortization: Work with Revenue Operations to inges