Registry
Module Specifications
Current Academic Year 2012 - 2013
Please note that this information is subject to change.
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| Description | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The aim of the module is to develop business students' understanding of the role of management accounting in organisations. More specficially it will develop students' competence to use management accounting information for planning, performance evaluation, decision making and costing activities within organisations. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning Outcomes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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1. Explain how accounting systems support management in their tasks of product costing, planning, control, performance evaluation and decision-making. 2. Describe the budgeting process and prepare basic budgets. 3. Ascertain the role of accounting information in evaluating the performance of organisations and produce basic variance analaysis. 4. Be able to analyse information using relevant costing principles for various decision scenarios. 5. Be able to use the simple technique of break even analysis and Cost Volume Profit Analysis (CVP) to assess how sensitive profit is to various factors. 6. Compute product costs, total costs and selling prices using traditional overhead recovery and activity-based techniques and normal absorption costing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml |
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| Indicative Content and Learning Activities | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Introduction to Management Accounting. Nature, purposes and origins of management and cost accounting; relationship with financial accounting and with other disciplines and business functions; factors influencing the design of management accounting systems; organisational role of the management accountant; management accounting and information technology.. Cost Concepts and Cost Classification. Nature of cost; cost objects; cost centres; nature and purposes of cost accumulation; different costs for different purposes; problems in cost accumulation; cost allocation; direct and indirect costs; production and non-production costs; product and period costs; cost behaviour; cost drivers; variable and fixed costs; total and average cost.. Cost Accumulation for Product Costing. Nature and purposes of product costing; choice of product costing system; overview of product costing problems and procedures; impact of alternative product costing methods of costing products and services; introduction to activity based costing.. Cost Volume-Profit (CVP) Analysis. The accountant's CVP model; breakeven point; margin of safety; contribution margin; critical evaluation of assumptions underlying the model; sensitivity analysis; usefulness and limitations of the model.. Decision Making. Nature and context of decisions; role of information; relevant revenues and costs and columnar presentation; role of historic costs; non-financial and qualitative considerations; limiting factors; product mix decision; acceptance of special orders, closing of business segment decisions.. Planning and Control. Nature of budgets and the budgetary process; forecasting; types of budget; budget period; preparation of subsidiary and master budgets; cash budgets. Control function; role of budgets and the budgetary process in control, including comparison of actual to flexible budget; basic analysis of variance; benefits and limitations of budgets; balanced scorecard; behavioural considerations.. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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