Upon successful completion of this course, participants will be able to:

Chapter 1

• Recognize the nature and scope of cost accounting and cost management.
• Distinguish between cost accounting and its related fields such as managerial accounting and financial accounting.
• Identify the three broad purposes for which the manager needs cost information and the roles of the treasury function.
• Identify developments in the cost accounting and cost management discipline with total quality management and business process engineering.

Chapter 2

• Identify examples of each of the basic cost elements involved in the manufacture of the product.
• Distinguish between variable costs and fixed costs and explain the difference in their behavior.
• Recognize the difference between direct and indirect costs.
• Recognize the usefulness of the contribution approach to income determination and differences between it and the traditional income statement.

Chapter 3

• Recognize classifications for manufacturing costs.
• Identify types of companies that will benefit from process costing and what is involved in process costing.

Chapter 4

• Recognize the problems associated with traditional overhead costing methods.
• Associate different cost drivers with different cost pools.
• Recognize activities in the value chain of business function in activity-based management (ABM).

Chapter 5

• Recognize how the cost-volume-profit analysis is used by management.
• Determine how to calculate the sales necessary to break even or to achieve a target income.
• Compute weighted-average contribution margins.
• Recognize the concept of a margin of safety.

Chapter 6

• Recognize examples of variable costs, fixed costs, and mixed costs.
• Identify methods for estimating the cost-volume formula.

Chapter 7

• Identify the major steps in budget preparation.
• Determine appropriate budget levels.

Chapter 8

• Calculate different variances related to manufacturing costs.
• Recognize responsibility accounting and the managerial significance of these variances.
• Identify the value of the analysis provided by performance reporting.
• Recognize the two-way, three-way, and four-way variance analysis for factory overhead.

Chapter 9

• Recognize how to calculate different variances associated with single and multi-product firms.

Chapter 10

• Understand how to compute return on investment (ROI) and how changes in sales, expenses, and assets affect the investment center’s performance.
• Identify how the residual income (RI) differs from ROI in measuring divisional performance.
• Identify how companies use the Corporate Balanced Scorecard to evaluate performance.
• Recognize the considerations required to determine appropriate transfer prices.

Chapter 11

• Identify the costs that are relevant for a particular decision.
• Recognize attributes in the theory of constraints.
• Identify characteristics of the target costing process for a new product.

Chapter 12

• Identify the impact of the time value of money on capital budgeting decisions.
• Recognize a number of capital budgeting techniques.

Chapter 13

• Recognize how income tax factors affect investment decisions.
• Identify the different types of depreciation methods.
• Recognize the effect of the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS) on capital budgeting decisions.

Chapter 14

• Recognize how to choose the right system for cost accumulations.
• Distinguish between the weighted-average and first-in, first-out (FIFO) process costing methods.
• Recognize different methods of allocating service department costs to production department work.

Chapter 15

• Identify how total quality management (TQM) in a manufacturing environment is best exemplified.
• Recognize how TQM can work well in a team environment and how quality can be used as a strategic weapon.

Chapter 16

• Recognize the carrying costs and ordering costs associated with inventory management.
• Identify the objectives of the basic economic order quantity (EOQ) model.