The objective of this book is to convey a foundation knowledge of management accounting practice within the context of relevant theory. The book situates management accounting in its social and organisational context, before examining costing, decision-making, planning and control and performance measurement. The book is particularly well illustrated with examples, exercises and graded questions to ensure that students have plenty of opportunity to apply the techniques they have studied.
Management Accounting: Practice and Theory is aimed at students of accounting, finance and business taking a first course in management accounting, at either undergraduate or professional level.
1. Introduction to management accounting
Defects of financial reports from a manager's point of view
What is management and cost accounting?
Managers and the management accounting process
Some useful features of cost and management accounting information
Organisation of the rest of the book
2. Management Accounting and Organisations
Theories of organisations and management
Motivation and incentives
3. Product and Services Costing
Costing in Business
Product Costing
Costing of Products
Traditional costing: is it still relevant?
Costing of services
4. Activity-based costing
Principles of ABC
ABC: implementation
The use of ABC in practice
Benefits, constraints and problems in applying ABC
5. Pricing
The relationship between price and quantity
Competition in the market
How do producers decide on prices?
Market-based pricing
Special cases
Pricing in context
6. Marginal Costing and Short-Term Decision-Making
Issues in decision-making
Cost variability
Marginal costing for decision-making
Cost-volume-profit analysis
Further applications of break-even in practice
Special decisions
Limitations of analysis based on marginal costing
7. Capial Investment Decisions
Capital investment in context
Simple appraisal techniques
More complex appraisal techniques
Choosing between projects
Strengths and weaknesses of the common investment appraisal techniques
The social context of decision-making
Investment appraisal in practice
8. Budgets
The relationship between strategy and budget setting
Principal types of budget
The budget process
Setting the budget: a practical example
Monitoring outcomes
Budgeting and its benefits and drawbacks
9. Accounting for Control
Organisational control mechanisms
Standard costing, flexible budgeting and variance analysis
Standard costing
Overhead variances
Investigating the reasons for variances
Standard costing: issues and problems
10. Divisional performance and transfer pricing
Divisionalisation: advantages and drawbacks
Measurements fo divisional performance: return on investment, residual income, economic value added
Introduction to transfer pricing
Transfer pricing problems and issues: conflict between divisions, sub-optimal decisions and tax consequences
11. Issues in management accounting
Information for strategic management
Market orientation: analysis of markets, competitors and activities
The balanced scorecard
Non-financial performance measurement
