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BUSA 203 [Managerial Accounting ~
BUSA 320 [Accounting
Information Systems] ~
BUSA 323 [Cost
Accounting & Control Systems]
BUSA 203: Managerial
Accounting
Catalog description:
Introduction to the use of accounting data for decision making, managerial
planning, and operational control. Topics include cost-volume-profit
relationships, cost accounting methods, budgeting, and performance evaluation.
Familiarity with Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet software is required.
Prerequisites: BUSA 202, CSCI 120. 4 credits.
What this course is about:
Managerial accounting focuses on
the use of accounting information to facilitate the business success of the
enterprise -- for both manufacturing and service firms. Also, the concepts of
management accounting are increasingly applied to government and not-for-profit
organizations, to help them succeed in their service missions, to be responsible
to the citizens they serve and to the funding agencies that support them.
Management accountants play a strategic role in an organization,
developing and presenting the information that is critical for the
organization's success, and are an integral part of the value creation process.
In a nutshell, this course is
about the economic and financial relationships which are the foundation of any
business. We will raise questions like the following: Can we make money? If not,
why not? If we can, how? How much? In what other ways can we measure
performance? Will we have enough cash? How do we create value for customers? How
do we maintain market position and competitiveness? What does the available
information tell us about the stability or erosion of our market position?
An understanding of an
organization’s competitive position in the market is as important as
understanding the costs of designing, producing, and marketing a product or
service. The complex relationships between costs, revenues, markets, internal
processes, competition, pricing, and strategy make management accounting an
especially rich and dynamic area for study. As we will see, these considerations
apply equally well to not-for profit institutions.
Course prerequisites
The prerequisites for a course
are intended to assure that you gain as much as possible from our
efforts over the semester. Students who have not had the requisite exposure to
basic concepts gained in BUSA 202 will find the concepts covered here more
difficult to grasp. Those with poorly-developed spreadsheet skills (e.g., Excel) will be at a major disadvantage because of the heavier
demands placed on them. Students without the requisite spreadsheet skills often wind
up dropping the course; those who continue in BUSA 203 usually have to do
remedial Excel preparation during the semester, and generally achieve
significantly lower grades in BUSA 203 than their counterparts with greater
proficiency in spreadsheet software.
Please
do not attempt to take this course until you have the requisite computer skills.
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BUSA 320:
Accounting information Systems Catalog description: Study of the flow of information through an enterprise, the
sources and nature of documents, and
the controls necessary to insure the accuracy and reliability of information.
Prerequisites: CSCE 120, BUSA 302. (4)
What this course is about:
As is the case with many professions, there are numerous
stereotypes of accountants. Consider the following: "My experience with the accountant is that for him
everything has equal importance. He is like the Lord in the Bible, where
it is written that 'a thousand years are in His sight as yesterday' when
it is past--except that it is just the other way around with the
accountant: 10 cents in the balance sheet is just as important as a
million dollars. The main thing for him is that every figure should be
correct." [attributed to a "prominent financial analyst"].
Or, perhaps your prefer this image:
"The typical auditor is a man past middle age, spare, wrinkled,
intelligent, cold, passive, non-committal, with eyes like a codfish,
polite in contact, but at the same time unresponsive, cold; calm and
damnably composed as a concrete post or a plaster-of-Paris cast; a human
petrification with a heart of feldspar and without charm of the friendly
germ, minus bowels, passion, or a sense of humor. Happily, they never
reproduce and all of them finally go to Hell." [attributed to Elbert
Hubbard] (Source: Charles T. Horngren's Cost Accounting: A Managerial
Emphasis, 4th edition, Prentice-Hall, 1977, p. 175.)
Students occasionally come into this class with other, less
cynical stereotypes or assumptions about the role of the accountant, and by
extrapolation, the content of the course. Some assume that accounting is
somehow separate and unrelated to other aspects of a business. Perhaps the image
of Bob Cratchit in Dickens' Christmas Carol, bending over his ledgers
with quill in hand, conveys an impression of detachment from the real world of
business operations.
Bob Cratchit's narrow focus on bookkeeping may have been
typical for accountants in mid 19th century London. However, the development
of modern accounting information systems requires an understanding of just about
every aspect of a business. One of the purposes of accounting procedures
and records is
to track the sale, acquisition and consumption of economic resources by
the organization. Accounting information systems, which are the
integrated
frameworks within organizations which are used to convert economic data into
financial information for use by managers and external constituencies. The accounting
information system (AIS) is a significant component in the larger management
information system (MIS) in an organization. Therefore, accounting affects just about every functional area within an
organization somewhere along the line. Even
if we are only concerned with a cost center in a manufacturing firm, at
some point, somehow, usage of resources has to be valued, documented, and
recorded.
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BUSA 323: Cost Accounting and Control
Systems Catalog description: Cost Accounting and Control Systems
is a critical examination of systems for product costing and managerial control.
Case analyses deal with a variety of traditional and non-traditional product and
service costing systems to achieve basic objectives of inventory valuation,
planning, and operational control. Emphasis on developing the skills to critique
cost systems and to understand the relationship between cost systems and
production/service operations, organizational strategy, and performance
evaluation and control systems. Prerequisites: MATH 128 (or MATH 151 and 230);
CSCI 220; STAT 231; ECON 151/152; BUSA 202, 203 (4)).
This course is about two sets of
systems within organizations--cost accounting systems and
managerial control systems:
 | cost
accounting is basically about developing financial models which
replicate the economic impact of the production processes within an
organization. Cost systems ultimately enable us to determine the
cost of products or services for inventory valuation and financial
reporting. We will use Excel to create models for cost allocation
for a variety of organizations [e.g., discrete product manufacturing
(think custom made furniture), continuous process production (think
making and packaging Cheerios), or services (a law firm)] and using
different cost distribution procedures [traditional allocation and
activity-based costing]. |
| managerial
control systems are the systems used by managers to ensure that
resources are obtained and used effectively and efficiently in achievement
of the organization's objectives. However, cost accounting systems and
managerial control systems may work at cross purposes. We will
examine situations in which the cost accounting systems have
perverse and counter-productive effects on managerial control
efforts. Understanding these behavioral impacts is a critical
element in systems design. |
While basic familiarity with financial statement preparation and
organization is essential, please note that this is not a bookkeeping
course. Familiarity with basic financial and managerial accounting
terminology is assumed. BUSA 202 (Financial Accounting) and BUSA 203 (Managerial
Accounting) are prerequisites for this course. BUSA 323 should not be taken
concurrently with BUSA 203. An additional requirement for successful completion of
BUSA 323 is proficiency in the use of a microcomputer spreadsheet (e.g., Excel);
students lacking proficiency in spreadsheet usage usually find the major
assignments in this course overwhelming. Students who lack the requisite
spreadsheet capability should not enroll in this course. |
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