Management Accounting for Decision Making

Across organizations, managers are expected to have sound knowledge of finance and accounting. As part of their job, managers use large volumes of information produced by accounting systems to make business decisions every day.

This business and management course will show you how accounting information is relevant to managers, and how it can be processed and analyzed for effective managerial decision-making. By examining accounting information that is extensively used across three key managerial functions of planning, decision-making and controlling, the course equips non-finance managers with basic accounting and finance skills. This course also discusses activity based costing, which provides insight on the cost structure of products and services.

What sets this course apart is the practicing manager-centric approach that is a part of each week of the course. Whether you are a student or a practicing manager, this course will allow you to easily follow all topics and directly apply concepts in practice.

Week 1. Introduction to Management Accounting
Financial and Cost Accounting
Basic Cost Terms and Cost Flow
Costing System
Preparation of Cost Sheet
Costing in Service Industry
Preparation of Cost Sheet in Service Industry
Financial, Cost and Management Accounting Week 2. Product Costing
Methods of Product Costing
Job Costing
Customer Costing
Process Costing
Treatment of Process Losses
Joint and By-products Week 3. Cost Allocation and Activity Based Costing
Indirect Cost
Method of Indirect Cost Allocation
Misallocation of Indirect Costs
Activity-based Costing
Implementation of Activity-based Costing
Activity-based Management Week 4. Cost Analysis for Decision Making
Absorption vs. Marginal Costing
Behavior of Costs
Break-even Analysis
BEP in Multiproduct Environment
Pricing Decision
Make or Buy decision
Discontinuing product or closing down divisions
Optimal Product Mix
Operating Leverage Week 5. Budgeting
Strategic Planning and Budgets
Budgeting Process
Types of Budgets
Benefits of Budgets
Approaches to Budget Preparation
Preparation of Master Budget
Budget Slack Week 6. Standard Costing and Variance Analysis
Setting Standards
Variance Analysis: General Framework
Variable Overhead Variance
Fixed Overhead Variance
Material Mix Variance
Sales and Sales Mix Variance
Investigating Variance