Managerial Accounting: Cost Behaviors, Systems, and Analysis

In this course, you will learn how to use accounting to facilitate and align decisions made by owners, managers, and employees. You will learn how accountants create, organize, interpret, and communicate information that improves internal processes and allows organizations to identify and leverage opportunities to create value within the supply chain and with customers. You will be able to: • Understand what managerial accounting is and why it is an important function for successful businesses • Identify problems associated with relying on financial accounting information for internal decision making • Organize cost information according to the decision-making needs of the organization • Apply activity-based costing (ABC) and recognize circumstances and decisions for which ABC systems are relevant • Address common "what-if" questions using cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis and apply CVP in a variety of scenarios This course is part of Gies College of Business’ suite of online programs, including the iMBA and iMSM. Learn more about admission into these programs and explore how your Coursera work can be leveraged if accepted into a degree program at https://degrees.giesbusiness.illinois.edu/idegrees/.

• Course Overview and Introduction to Managerial Accounting
• In this module, you will become familiar with the course, your instructor, your classmates, and our learning environment. Then, you will be introduced to Managerial Accounting and Costing Concepts.
• Costing Systems I - Elements and Design
• Organizations can organize cost information however best suits their decisions. In this module, we introduce the role of costing systems, identify some example systems and settings in which they are most useful, and explore how accounting for overhead costs influences the value of cost information.
• Costing Systems II - Activity-Based Costing
• Activity-based costing systems adopt a more refined view of the organization, and can increase the accuracy of cost information. In this module, we introduce the fundamentals of activity-based costing systems, identify related advantages and disadvantages, and demonstrate how such systems are implemented using an in-depth example.
• Cost-Volume-Profit (CVP) Analysis
• Cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis is the tool that managers can use to better understand the answers to "what-if" questions in order to make better decisions for their companies. In this module you will explore the power of CVP analysis.