If you have completed BUS103: Introduction to Financial Accounting, you know that firms need to track various forms of data in order to report to investors, regulators, and potential business associates such as customers and vendors.
Business managers use managerial accounting to help make decisions about their future activities: they need more information and detail than the data they provide in reports to their external stakeholders. They may need data tailored to meet the needs of a particular business unit, which is not applicable to the firm as a whole. While departmental managers have different needs, most management decisions deal with the same key issues: cost, price, and profit.
In managerial accounting, we examine complex financial decision-making and identify the tools and methods managers use to make informed decisions. We begin by introducing the terms we will reference in later units. We will discuss various methods and theories managers use to track costs and profits. In the final section, we explore how managers report the overall performance of a firm or department for internal use.
- Unit 1: Managerial Accounting
- Unit 2: Job Costing
- Unit 3: Process Costing
- Unit 4: Cost Behavior Patterns
- Unit 5: Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis
- Unit 6: Using Differential Analysis to Make Decisions
- Unit 7: Budgets
- Unit 8: Variance Analysis
- Unit 9: Performance Evaluation
- Unit 10: Statement of Cash Flows
- Unit 11: Using Managerial Accounting: Trends and Ratios
- Compare and contrast financial accounting and managerial accounting in terms of audience, reporting, time frame, and use of information;
- Analyze transactions of a manufacturing business;
- Calculate cost information and use it to support operating and strategic decisions regarding products, customers, and long-term assets;
- Explain how managerial accounting information facilitates planning, controlling, and decision-making activities; and
- Describe why managerial accounting requires a cross-functional team.