Accounting (ACCT) 355

Overview

ACCT 355 will take you through the details of cost accumulation and product costing, as well as the measurement and identification of relevant costs for managerial decision making, planning, control, and performance measurement.

Lesson 1 serves as a foundation for the course, providing a general perspective of management accounting and how it relates to financial accounting. The first part of the lesson discusses management accounting in a global business environment and describes how the ever-changing business environment has affected the practice of management accounting and the accountant’s role in an organization. The second part of Lesson 1 looks at management accounting practices and terminology, and provides an overview of basic concepts in identifying and classifying costs.

Lessons 2 through 10 are organized according to three themes:

• Lessons 2 to 4 focus on cost accumulation and product costing for inventory valuation and income determination. This theme focuses mainly on assigning costs to products and services to separate costs incurred during a period between costs of goods sold and inventories.
• Lessons 5 to 7 discuss the measurement and identification of relevant costs for different types of managerial decisions.
• Lessons 8 to 10 concentrate on the processes involved in planning, control, and performance measurement. The emphasis is on the accounting process as a means of providing information to help managers control the activities for which they are responsible.

Outline

Lesson 1: Accounting, Business, and Competitiveness

Lesson 2: Product Costing, Job Order Costing

Lesson 3: Activity-based and Service Department Costing

Lesson 4: Process Costing and Spoilage

Lesson 5: Cost Behaviour and Cost-Volume-Profit (CVP) Analysis

Lesson 6: Absorption versus Variable Costing; Relevant Information for Decision Making

Lesson 7: Pricing and Inventory Decisions, JIT, and Backflush Costing

Lesson 8: The Master Budget

Lesson 9: Flexible Budget and Variance Analysis

Lesson 10: Management Control Systems, Transfer Pricing, and Multinational Considerations

Evaluation

To receive credit for ACCT 355, you must write a Midterm Examination and a Final Examination. Any assignments not submitted will receive a grade of 0%. You must achieve a minimum grade of “D” (50%) on the Final Examination and a minimum overall course grade of “D” (50 percent). The following chart describes the credit weight associated with each course requirement:

To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.

Your performance in ACCT 355 will be evaluated on the basis of the work conducted on assignments and on the results of the examination. Because the assignments and the examination have been designed to assess analytical skills, you will need to synthesize the concepts learned throughout the course.