Course Description
The design of accounting systems to serve the internal needs of
management with an emphasis on underlying theory. Product
costing, including activity-based costing; budgeting and other
planning applications, information for decision making, planning
and control application for decentralized organizations.
Athena Title
Managerial I
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in ACCT 5100, ACCT 5100H, ACCT 7530E
Non-Traditional Format
Students analyze three Harvard-style business cases on
different management accounting topics. This analysis requires
higher level integration and application of course content,
coupled with extensive technical analysis, in proposing
effective solutions to realistic ill-structured business
problems. The cases will be distributed the first week of
class.
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall and spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- Students will understand how to prepare and interpret management accounting information for both operational and strategic decision making.
- Students will understand how to determine the costs and profitability of different products, services, and customers.
- Students will understand how to use that cost information along with other cost and revenue data to prepare cost-volume-profit analyses, and to make informed strategic and operational business decisions, such as identifying relevant revenues and costs for special short-term decisions, such as accepting or rejecting one-time only special orders.
- Students will understand how to use cost information to plan business operations, and to measure performance of different responsibility centers and their managers using techniques such as variance analysis.
- Students will understand how to anticipate how management accounting information affects employees' incentives and behavior, and how to decide when and where a particular management accounting tool is likely to be useful.
Topical Outline
- Job Costing
- Activity-Based Costing
- Process Costing
- Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis
- Relevant Costs and Business Decisions (e.g., pricing, special orders, product mix, outsourcing)
- Budgeting
- Standard Costing and Variance Analysis
- Other Topics (e.g., variable costing, other performance measures)
