Techniques of Management Accounting : An Essential Guide for Managers and Financial Professionals - Hardcover

Young, David

9780071384865: Techniques of Management Accounting : An Essential Guide for Managers and Financial Professionals

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071384863 ISBN 13: 9780071384865

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 2003

Management accounting plays a vital decision-making role in today's lean organization. Techniques of Management Accounting is the first book to provide a practical, hands-on approach to its three key areas: full-cost accounting, differential cost accounting, and management control systems. Focusing less on line-item detail and more on real-world application, it provides managers with the tools they need to interpret key financial information��and improve overall performance.

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From the Back Cover:

Today's First Hands-On Guidebook to Understanding the Intricacies of Management Accounting--for Improved Decision Making on Every Level

In today's highly competitive business arena, a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of management accounting has become necessary for decision-making success. Techniques of Management Accounting provides executives, managers, and finance professionals with a practical approach to understanding and implementing management accounting's three key areas--full-cost accounting, differential cost accounting, and responsibility accounting.

Focusing less on line-item detail and more on real-world applicability, this clearly written and organized book provides the knowledge and insights you need to make accurate, results-oriented decisions concerning

Full cost computations
Cost behavior
Differential cost computations
Absorption costing
Activity-based costing (ABC)
Variable costing
Responsibility structure design
Programming
Operational budgeting
Measuring and reporting on results

When senior and line managers approve financial decisions without fully understanding them, their organizations lose competitive advantage and are impeded from reaching their full potential. Techniques of Management Accounting covers every aspect of this vital area--all in the straightforward language of business instead of the all-too-often confusing and mathematically dense jargon of traditional accounting texts.

"This book's goal is to help managers be more effective in a business environment where an understanding of management accounting is important to success. Moreover, the book aims to give readers an improved ability to communicate with their organizations' accountants, to help ensure that the management accounting information provided to line managers and others is as useful as possible for decision making."--From the Introduction

As a manager, do you know how to design a programming process that reinforces your organization's strategy? Are you familiar with the distinction between absorption costing and variable costing, and the advantages and disadvantages of each? Do you know when to include depreciation in making an alternative choice decision and when not to?

And, perhaps most important, do you know how that knowledge could help you--and your organization--to achieve breakthrough performance?

Techniques of Management Accounting answers the above questions and hundreds more, providing you with the management accounting skills and knowledge you need to understand how the numbers are computed, what they mean, and how managers and finance professionals can work together to use them to improve an organization's competitive stance. From the accounting acumen required to understand financial decisions and formulate specific proposals, to the political, behavioral, and other considerations that can influence senior management's decision process on such proposals, this step-by-step book is decidedly nontraditional in three important respects:

Business Orientation--Accounting details are discussed only to the extent they are needed to describe the concepts and techniques used in most organizations
Organizational Focus--Examples from manufacturing, nonmanufacturing, service, and nonprofit organizations are used to illustrate management accounting concepts and principles
Interactive Learning Process--Throughout each chapter, questions and problems allow you to apply principles to real-world situations--rather than just memorizing them

Management accounting plays a vital decision-making role in today's lean organization. Let Techniques of Management Accounting introduce you to the management accounting concepts, principles, and techniques you need to decipher essential financial information. Then interpret and use that information to improve your decision-making in virtually every area of business.

About the Author:

David W. Young, D.B.A., is a professor of accounting and control and former accounting department chair at Boston University's School of Management. A principal in The Crimson Group, Inc., a respected firm specializing in customized in-house management education programs, Professor Young is the author of The Manager's Guide to Creative Cost Cutting and coauthor of Management Control in Nonprofit Organizations. He has consulted with a wide variety of organizations on management control system design, and lectured and taught throughout Europe, Latin America, Japan, and the Middle East.

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