Go to    Conceptual Foundation    Daily Applications    Quiz yourself

This site is organized around a fictitious business called Charlie's Furniture Shop. To keep himself busy during his retirement, Charlie started making reproductions of antique furniture, which he sold to friends and neighbors. Charlie's business has grown, and now Charlie realizes that he needs help in making decisions about the operation of his business, and he has asked for our help. As we'll, Charlie has developed quite a list of questions. We'll get to some of those shortly.

In order to understand Charlie's questions and how to answer them, we need to develop an understanding of basic concepts of managerial accounting.* The concepts are outlined under the general heading of Conceptual Foundation. Topical material is organized in more or less the same fashion as in a typical managerial accounting text, but there is considerably less detail. There are probably topics [and entire chapters] in your management accounting text for which there is no corresponding section or module in this Web.

The conceptual foundation is linked directly to a series of Daily Applications. The applications focus on Charlie's questions, which start with the basic issue of profitability. The other questions Charlie raises are typical of those addressed in a managerial accounting textbook, and which are representative of the questions that arise in managing a small business [or a larger business, for that matter]. However, the focus on a small business provides a context with which most students can associate. Just about everyone has had some contact with a small business of one kind or another. 

The daily applications provide solved [or partially solved] numerical problems. Most are derived from a series of Excel^® spreadsheets which you are advised to replicate in order to ensure that you understand the derivation of the cell formulas used to arrive at the answers. Once you have completed the applications on a given topic, you should go on to the Quiz Yourself section on that topic. The Quiz Yourself pages are designed to let you try out your skills. Some depend on manipulating the data you have just used in one or more of the related applications. Other quizzes focus on new or different scenarios, but they all ultimately come back to Charlie's questions about his fledgling business.

You can easily use the embedded hyperlinks to move back and forth between the conceptual foundation, Charlie's questions, the daily applications, and the quizzes.

Now that you have an idea about the organization of the management Accounting Web, we're ready to talk to Charlie. Next >>>

* This Web uses the terms managerial accounting and management accounting interchangeably.

Copyright © 2004 Gerald M. Myers. All rights reserved. This site has been developed as aid to instructors and students in managerial accounting. The scenarios contained herein are not intended to reflect effective or ineffective handling of managerial situations. Any resemblance to existing organizations is purely coincidental.

Last modified: August 03, 2005