70111 - Management Accounting

Learning outcomes

The course provides students with the main techniques of management accounting i.e. the budgeting process, the reporting process and the cost accounting techniques. At the end of the course students are able: (a) to know the aims of the management accounting system of a company and its most relevant components; (b) to know the role and the main steps of the budgeting process; (c) to know the role and the main steps of the reporting process; (d) to know the meaning of the terms cost object, cost center, direct costs, indirect costs, overhead costs, variable and fixed costs, cost allocation and cost systems; (e) to know and apply the technique of cost-volume-profit analysis, how to prepare such an analysis, and its uses and limitations; (f) to know how to apply cost analysis for supporting short-term managerial decisions; (g) to know how to develop and to assess the cost accounting system of a company (direct costing, full costing, activity-based costing). This course is integrated with Analysing and Interpreting Financial Statement Lab as it completes the integrated course Accounting for Decision Making (I.C.) with the competences needed to analyze cost information and develop the control process to support the decision making process.

Course contents

First part of the course:

a) The main concepts about cost analysis and cost classification

b) The use of cost information for supporting the decision making process

c) The cost accounting systems

 

Second part of the course

a) The management accounting process

b) Planning and setting targets 

c) The cost-volume-profit analysis

d) The Budgeting process

Readings/Bibliography

Drury, Colin, Cost and Management Accounting, 9 th edition, Cengage learning.

Teaching methods

- Lectures

- Case studies

 

Assessment methods

A written exam made of two exercises

Office hours

See the website of Franco Visani