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Cost Management: Measuring, Monitoring, and Motivating Performance (Management Accounting)
Leslie G. Eldenburg , and
Susan K. Wolcott
Manufacturer: Wiley
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0471205494 |
Book Description
Cost Management" was written in response to changes in the global business environment. Unbridled access to information and intense competition has meant that cost accounting has become an increasingly important tool for managers and accountants alike. Most textbooks focus on content knowledge and then expect students to 'magically' demonstrate skills such as decision-making and critical thinking. "Cost Management" better prepares students for professional success by bridging the gaps between Knowledge, Skills and Abilities. Many students fail to recognize the assumptions, limitations, behavioral implications and qualitative factors that influence managerial decision-making. The dynamic, new author team focuses on cost accounting methods, techniques and the quality of cost accounting information used for decision-making to deliver a thoroughly modern treatment of cost accounting topics.
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MP Financial and Managerial Accounting: The Basis for Business Decisions w/ My Mentor, Net Tutor, and OLC w/ PW (Financial and Managerial Accounting)
Jan Williams ,
Sue Haka , and
Mark S Bettner
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
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ASIN: 0072942827 |
Book Description
Financial and Managerial Accounting has been updated to incorporate detailed information on recent legislation affecting the accounting profession, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The accompanying CD and PowerWeb applications give you greater interaction and continuously updated information.
Book Description
ACCOUNTING: INFORMATION FOR DECISIONS, 6th is proud to define excellence in its approach to Financial Accounting. Clearly illustrating that accounting is the language of business, all students will be able to drive excellence in their own careers when they start with this strong foundation. This innovative approach continues to provide direction to students who choose accounting careers, and to those who progress through their careers as business managers. The streamlined new design of the 6th edition provides a clear, concise, and directional learning path so students will easily navigate their way through the material and enhance their learning experience with clear connections to topics in the book and issues in the workforce. Recent news headlines indicate that the coverage of ethics has never been more important - especially in Accounting. The 6th edition highlights ethical dilemmas and challenges students to think about what they would do when faced with these issues. In addition, updates on the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have also been included.
Customer Reviews:
Super !!.......2007-08-04
Received in about 14 days from the US to Japan. Had a slight delay in shipping but book came well within time period and in perfect condition.
A starting book.......2007-07-04
If you have been out of accounting for a while or starting from scratch it is a good book to start with. Of course the main focus is of getting an overview for the balanced sheet, income statement and cash flow. For someone who is starting in accounting the section F2 gives an inside for financial interpretation and another good point is a lot of cases and calculation examples are included in this revision. But if you are looking for a more deeper insight than this book will only help you the half way to get their.
Beware.......2007-06-22
If this book is required for your class beware! There are still questions in the self study questions, through out the book that after 6 editions are still are wrong. The book will say one thing in the chapter and then want you to do another in the chapter questions, without the benifit of telling you how or giving an example. I took my course online without the benifit of an instructor to ask questions face to face. This proved to be difficult. I am sure if you have a GOOD understanding of accounting this is a good book however with out a little background it can be a little trying.
Just an ordinary accounting book.......1999-10-04
The book is overall quite good as an introductory text for accounting, but there are other books out there, equally good, that come a lot cheaper.
Book Description
Weygandt Managerial Accounting Third Edition gives students the tools they need to succeed, whether as accountants or in other career paths. With a framework in decision-making, Weygandt 3/e covers all the necessary techniques and concepts for a one semester, undergraduate managerial accounting course. Many students in this course are not accounting majors and will need to understand the big picture of accounting. Therefore, Weygandt 3/e provides students with a pedagogy that helps them to build their decision-making skills and to understand how to use accounting information to make quality business decisions in whatever major or career they choose.
Customer Reviews:
It's Accounting.......2006-11-04
I bought this book for a Managerial accounting class. I found that chapters to be well written and the example easy to follow. Enron gets used a lot. What I didn't like was that problems in the back of the book are not as clear as they could be. Most of the time, I plug in the wrong formula. So that part could have been clearer. The answers are all on a CD, that access a website for the answers. So if you like me and still have dial-up, you may have a problem there too. However I am still pulling a B in the class, so I'm getting something.
Very Practical Book,Classic.......2006-01-27
Jerry really knows how to help people learn accounting. Learning accounting is about practising but not reading. Reading helps but it won't solve problems. The one thing I really appreciate about this book is Jerry uses real life accounting practice within companies from different industries to illustrate every single chapter, within which all the accounting theories and principals naturally flow. You can see all the kinds of accounting problems with actual number and data being solved with the application of relevant accounting theories,principals and methods. You know how real things are done. I have read many accounting books, among which loads of books lack exercises for me to practice after I read certain chapter. But buying Jerry's book, you get two books, one for reading, and one for exams. Nearly half of the book is Exam Questions, which emulate my real exams quite well. I can't believe an accounting without good exercise questions is an book. If you seriously want to pass exams and know how the real accounting is done,this is the book for you!
No solutions... How are you supposed to check your progress?.......2005-09-12
This book is good about listing the objectives and showing you exactly where to find the answers for the multiple choice questions. For example: What is the purpose of a job cost sheet? The book highlights the area where the answer is. Easy huh? Well, what about the actual accounting problems? The detailed problems at the end of each chapter have NO SOLUTIONS to them, and you can't buy a solutions guide unless you are an instructor! I'm not an accounting wizard, so I have to actually practice before it sticks in my brain... imagine that. I guess they expect everyone to see the problems and read about the problems and automatically get it. They work out a "Demonstration Problem" for you, but that only applies to some of the problems at the end of each chapter.
Book Description
Unlike any other text, Ingram presents managerial accounting as a crucial communication tool for management decision making. Additionally, students learn that service-oriented and product-oriented organizations apply similar approaches to gain accurate, timely information. Throughout the book, managerial accounting is viewed as a key component of multi-disciplinary management-with accountants working as part of a team to resolve questions of costing, pricing, and production.
Book Description
This innovative, user-oriented book focuses on the professional use of accounting information for decision making. It places the reader into situations where management decisions are needed and explains when and why accounting information is a key source of data for making informed strategic choices.
Customer Reviews:
Information for Decisions.......1999-06-02
My stereotype of accounting texts before taking an accounting class and using this book was they were all focused on the mechanics of accounting, which are dull to most students. This textbook, on the other hand, emphasizes the usefulness of accounting in the real world before delving into all the rules and regimentation. Therefore, some subjects, like debts and credits, receive less attention than they might deserve, especially for serious accounting students. The textbook's diagrams are quite colorful and useful, and its language is simple enough for your average student to understand. Hence, I recommend the book to any introductory-level business student, but I think that more serious accounting students might prefer a more advanced or in-depth textbook.
Book Description
Hilton/Maher/Selto (HMS) addresses traditional cost concepts, but makes cost accounting functional by focusing on measuring and managing costs. HMS maintains that, "Costs don’t just happen," and with a pro-active approach toward costs, accountants can add value to an organization. The real-world approach of this text, including the use of focus companies and the accompanying focus sites, provides a realistic business environment, and aids in student comprehension and interest in the subject.
Book Description
Accounting for Decision Making and Control by Jerry Zimmerman continues to grow in popularity with instructors due to its emphasis on teaching students to critically evaluate and solve actual business problems. Zimmerman is able to achieve this through: 1) Strong conceptual framework; 2) Business orientation focusing on how organizations work; 3) Balance between concepts & practice; 4) Strongest problem material available.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent book.......2007-03-02
It contains philosophy and present contept to apply to the decision making. Managerial accounting is more than journal entry and computation. It's about decision making and performance evaluation.
Worse book in my entire MBA program.......2006-11-14
Beware ! This book does perhaps the poorest example explaining any concepts. I have never had so much stress in my life than taking a managerial accounting class with this book. I mean I actually couldn't sleep because of this book!
I took this class last year and I just finished my MBA and I am working on my Phd now, and I thought I would reflect and give some valuable advice to you, my fellow students.
If you don't have a prior managerial accounting background, go read as much as you can before you get into this book. Or you will be completely stressed out, lost and feel that you are a dummy. This book makes smart students feel dum. I mean really dum. You are not dum, the book just lacks clear explanations.
This book deals mostly with managerial accounting. For example if you are paid $100 per day at your job, really you are costing the company more than what you are being paid, really you use resources, like from human resources who hired you, electricity costs, phone costs, IT, etc, so your true cost to the company broken down is probably $160 per day. This is called cost allocation, in a crude example.
Easy concept right?, Just that you will not be able to learn this easily from this book unless you have a deep prior background in this. The good examples Zimmerman(author) gives are spoiled by the majority of his jargon and bad examples.
I honestly found myself at one point reading 1 page for over an hour to understand! (and I am a high A student). In my entire MBA program, I never had a worse book, nor more stress!!!
Ultimately, I had to do many exhaustive Internet searches to learn cost allocation theory.
Some reasons why this book is so bad:
(1) Does not explain many concepts with clear explanations
(2) Uses too much jargon
(3) Shows graphs and vital data one the next pages instead of including them on the same page, Imagine as you read you have to constantly change the page to see the graphs and charts, Very poor!
(4) Zimmeran doesn't want to teach, rather he wants to prove to you that he is smart!
(5) THE WORST
Perhaps the worst is the homework problems in the back. Zimmerman (the author) does not give sufficient examples of how to solve these examples. Nor does the book give the answers. Also, some problems are extremely hard, even the professor of the class had difficulty solving and explaining this. What is the goal of a book if students have to search elsewhere and be stressed out to learn?
I would say that this book is like taking a class in Algebra and having questions and concepts explained in Calculus.
Again, if you don't have a prior background in any of this, go take a class at a junior college on cost accounting to prepare for this book, you will need it. Or you too will be so stressed out!!
Jerold Zimmerman, please don't take personal offense, you may be a smart guy, but the art of education is explaining concepts easily and showing your work, which in my opinion and my fellow students' opinion, overall this book lacks.
GOOD LUCK to all students, and my prayers are with you if you have this book.
Bloated with Homework Problems.......2005-08-30
The most surprising thing was how much of the book is homework problems (blue pages). Viewed edge-on they appear to be ~50% of the pages. Many problems are excessively wordy, fine as novellos but reading 2 pages to get to the issues is often tedious. The text is well written, but I didn't find the subject to have as much meat as other MBA subjects like Finance or Operations Research. I understand it is one of the better books on Managerial Accounting. I have 27 years experience at many companies, so others might find the material more enlightening.
Great book!.......2002-12-24
The great take away from this book is that executives try hard to achieve the optimal solutions for management problems, but that they seldomly succeed. The reason: they underestimate the creativity of their sub-ordinates (and their superiors).
For ages students and lecturers thought management accounting was dull. Zimmerman shows how fascinating this subject can be. The decision making parts show how to calculate optimal solutions for management accounting problems, the control parts make your realize how difficult it is to make the optimal solutions come true. The implication: the amount of consulting work to be done is infinite.
Think Management Accounting Rather Than Cost Accounting.......2002-10-24
Too often management accounting is completely subsumed in cost accounting. Yes, they are part of the same topic, but they have somewhat different emphases. This book covers costs, but it is really more focused on how you allocated decision rights, set measurement criteria, and how you reward people to get the behavior you want. It is also very helpful in clarifying thinking about what could be going wrong if you aren't getting the behavior you wanted out of a given system of measurement and reward.
The writing is very good and the organization of the book is sound and helpful. While there are charts and graphs it is not a book full of color and pictures. It is a book with words and ideas that are helpfully supplemented as needed. But the self-study problems and cases are set off from the main text by being on different color pages. This helps in locating what you are after.
There is a wealth of thought provoking problems and short cases to help promote discussion and provoke your thinking on the topics discussed in each chapter.
Another aspect of the book I really like are the concept questions in each chapter that help you gauge your understanding of what you have just read. The solutions for these are provided in the back of the book so you can know if you are "getting it" or not.
This is a fine and very useful text.
Book Description
If you are looking to significantly upgrade your management practices to better meet the needs of today’s increasingly volatile, complex, competitive, and global markets, look no further. Best Practices in Planning and Performance Management Reporting, Second Edition provides you with an accessible framework to help any business unite its reporting and budgeting functions to achieve its strategic objectives.
Customer Reviews:
Excellant resource; well written.......2007-10-08
This is a very practical book that quickly gets to to best practices. I like the case study of how American Express eliminated budgets.
Best Practices to create value.......2007-07-23
Author David Axson provides practical best practices for the company interested in solving one its most crucial bottlenecks in creating value. It provides a clear roadmap for the "integration" of strategic planning, budgeting, forecasting and reporting. In most companies today these are fragmented or disparate processes that lack synchronization.
This book is an excellent reference guide with clear, concise examples. A real interesting read.
At last a reasonable definition for best practice.......2007-06-29
What Axson does is define what a best practice is. How it does not apply only to one company or industry. How anyone can adapt an existing one or, in fact, invent a new one for the benefit of other companies and industries.
Plenty of examples what companies do right and wrong and how to find the "low-hanging fruit" of common mistakes and right those mistakes using best practices.
How to shorten cycle time and implement decisions.......2006-11-15
According to David Axson, traditional planning and management reporting processes "are simply too slow, too detailed, and too disconnected for today's competitive world. Managers are seeking new decision-making processes and tools that enable them to shorten the cycle time to make and implement a decision." This book offers processes and tools to meet that need, what Axson characterizes as "the current "state of the art" practices, based on the benchmarks and client experiences of The Hackett Group of which Axson was a co-founder. As with so many other business books, this one responds to an important question, in fact to two:
What is the best level of performance to be achieved?
How is it to be accomplished?
Axson organizes his material with three Parts. First he explains why best practices can be "a vehicle for performance improvement," then describes the best practices for "each element of the planning and management reporting process - strategic planning, operational and financial planning, management reporting, and forecasting." Finally, in Part III, he provides insights into "the steps required to design a benchmark, build a best practices process, understand the critical success factors for implementation, and the importance of effective leadership. As I read Axson's book, I felt as if I were examining the contents of a "tool kit," with the book serving as an instructions manual.
Over recent years when retained by corporate clients to help them reduce cycle time while improving first-pass yield, I was frequently aware of the fact that the cycle time and first-pass yield of those initiatives were themselves "too slow, too detailed, and too disconnected for today's competitive world." I mention this because the same may be true of initiatives to identify and then implement best practices. Quite properly, Axson does not suggest which best practices to select but he offers invaluable advice as to how to ensure that their implementation is both effective and (key word) efficient.
He asserts that best practices must effect a measurable improvement of performance, be applicable across a broad spectrum of comparable organizations, be proven in practice, take full advantage of proven technologies, ensure an acceptable level of control and risk management, and get the skills and capabilities of the given organization in proper alignment. It is important to note that (a) his observations and recommendations are anchored in an abundance of real-world experiences and (b) are best viewed within a continuous and integrated process rather than as separate, autonomous initiatives.
On pages 19-20, Axson identifies the basic steps of best practice marketing: identify an opportunity for improvement, determine whether or not it justifies taking action, investigate the reasons for a "shortfall" in performance, identify the best practices which can be applied, and then focus on implementing the change(s) to achieve substantial improvement of the given organization's operations. To me, some of the most valuable material in this book is provided in Chapter 6, "Operational and Financial Planning: Translating Ideas into Action." He guides his reader through the step-by-step process.
In this context, I am reminded of what Peter Drucker once said in an article written for the Harvard Business Review in 1963: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." Hence the importance of determining, first, which "shortfall" in performance is in greatest need of reduction, if not elimination. However, when making that determination, beware of responding to symptoms rather than to root causes. It is often helpful to use the "fishboning" technique: When discussing with associates a specific question or problem, ask "Why?" and in response to the answer, ask "Why?" again and continue to do so in this manner to each of least five subsequent responses to it. This admittedly an irritating but frequently productive process.
Decision-makers in any organization (regardless of its size or nature) will benefit substantially from the information, insights, and suggestions which Axson provides in this volume. To repeat, he does not suggest which benchmarks to select but does correctly emphasize that benchmarks must meet four primary requirements. They must be objective, quantifiable, credible, and actionable. Implicit, presumably, is another requirement: that a benchmark is relevant. One final point: What is a best practice today can soon become the norm and then the "shortfall" in need of attention. In that event, Axson's book will have provided an excellent preparation to respond to it effectively.
illuminating insights.......2003-08-05
An entertaining, insightful book - I found it useful in describing how benchmarking can be used to good effect in practise - in real situations - from someone who has definitely been there and done it. Our organization can certainly use the advice here - big time - and save ourselves a bunch of consultancy fees into the bargain!
Books:
- Cost Management: Measuring, Monitoring, and Motivating Performance (Management Accounting)
- Cost Management: Strategies for Business Decisions
- Cracking the Code: The Fascinating Truth About Taxation In America
- Creative Cash Flow Reporting: Uncovering Sustainable Financial Performance
- Currency Overlay: A Practical Guide
- Design for Six Sigma : A Roadmap for Product Development
- Essential Project Investment Governance and Reporting: Preventing Project Fraud And Ensuring Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance
- Essentials of Cost Accounting for Health Care Organizations (2nd Edition)
- Essentials of Credit, Collections, and Accounts Receivable
- Essentials of Supply Chain Management, 2nd Edition (Essentials (John Wiley))
Books Index
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