ACC 303: Management Accounting (Performance Management

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, students should be able to:

  1. evaluate and apply appropriate budgeting and standard costing techniques to planning and control in business.;
  2. discuss the behavioural aspect of budgeting and budgetary control;
  3. discuss strategic performance management in evaluating and improving organisational performance;
  4. evaluate and apply cost reduction and control techniques for efficiency of business operations;
  5. discuss the use of spreadsheet applications in Performance Management;
  6. discuss the underlying concepts in Performance Management;
  7. prepare cost information for decision making, using relevant costs;
  8. evaluate divisional performances and discuss different transfer pricing techniques;
  9. discuss various pricing strategies and calculate product prices using these strategies;
  10. discuss ethical principles relating to Performance Management; and
  11. discuss and evaluate topical issues in Performance Management.
Course Contents

Strategic management accounting techniques in performance management. Budget and budgetary control in relation to the following: forecasting, master and subsidiary budgets, including cash budget, and flexible budgets. The behavioural aspect of budgeting and budgetary control. Standard costing and analysis of variances. Cost reduction and control techniques in business operations. Spreadsheet applications in performance management. Decision making: identification of relevant cost based on given data and information for short term decision making, cost-volume-profit analyses (including single and multiple products) using both numerical and graphical techniques with relevant advice to management. Different

pricing strategies. Dealing with uncertainty in decision-making. Application of learning and experience curve theory. Discuss performance management in relation to the following: definitions, nature and scope. Comparison between performance management and cost accounting. Comparison between performance management and financial accounting, cost information for decision making, using relevant costs. Divisional performance and different transfer pricing techniques; various pricing strategies and calculation of product prices using these strategies. Ethical principles relating to performance management. Topical issues in performance management, covering -Activity-Based Costing (ABC), Just-in-Time, Kaizen costing, target costing, lifecycle costing, backflush accounting, throughput accounting, advanced manufacturing techniques and balance scorecard.