When it comes to making business decisions, having access to current financial information us crucial. Dennis Caplan from the University of Albany defines financial accounting as those accounting systems which record what has happened, i.e. end of year and stockholder reports. He explains that management accounting reflects what is happening currently in the business and contends that it provides a much truer representation of a company’s current financial status.
His accounting textbook provides a much better explanation of the different types of accounting than I do here. It is presented as a series of web pages. Printer-friendly versions are available upon request.
Management Accounting Concepts and Techniques Table of Contents
- Part 1: Introduction
- Management accounting defined, described, and compared to financial accounting
- Relevant concepts from management and operations management, and a brief history of management accounting
- Part 2: Microeconomic foundations of management accounting
- Relevant cost analysis
- Cost behavior
- Cost-volume-profit
- Flexible budgeting
- Cost variances for direct materials and labor
- Part 3: Product costing and cost allocations
- Product costing
- Normal costing
- Standard costing
- Activity-based costing
- Allocation of service department costs
- The role of cost in setting prices
- Part 4: Determining the cost of inventory
- Work-in-process
- Alternative inventory valuation methods
- Fixed manufacturing overhead
- Cost variances for variable and fixed overhead
- Joint products
- Part 5: Planning tools and performance measures for projects and divisions
- Capital budgeting
- Operating budgets
- Budgetary incentive schemes
- Divisional performance measures
- Transfer pricing
- Corporate social responsibility
- Five-page summary of key concepts
- Glossary
View this Free Online Material at the source:
Management Accounting Concepts and Techniques
