Introduction to Accounting, Management Accounting

• Cost assessments for products and organizational units. 
• Planning and budgeting methods.
• Budget follow-ups and performance evaluation related to managerial accounting.

To fulfill the purposes of the course the student must be able to:  
Demonstrate a basic knowledge about the course focus areas enabling them to: 

• Identify, describe and evaluate alternative accounting methods that might be used in specific cost accounting situations, also involving considerations about management incentives. 
• List and describe relevant concepts and definitions. 
• Explain and relate concepts and definitions to specific economic decision problems. 
• Relate the purposes and basic concepts of managerial accounting to the methods and procedures used in an accounting system. 

Demonstrate skills, such that the student is able to: 

• Use simple methods to calculate product costs, costs of goods sold, and inventory values in job costing and process costing systems as well as other frequently used accounting systems such as Activity Based Costing systems. 
• Prepare a master budget and flexible budgets for a given period based upon known assumptions about resource consumption and business policies. 
• Calculate and analyze variances between actual and budgeted costs for a given period.   
• Utilize accounting based calculations in decisions on prices, product mix, processes and activities. 

Demonstrate competences, such that the student is able to: 

• Choose a suitable accounting system for a firm with known characteristics.
• Utilize various accounting calculations and statements for the internal management of the firm as a decentralized organization, including among other things budgeting, motivation, control and performance evaluation. 

• Horngren’s Cost Accounting – a managerial emphasis, Srikant M. Datar and Madhav V. Rajan, Pearson, latest edition

Classes are organized such that the teacher during class hours will cover main subjects from the course. The student’s understanding of the principles and methods and their skills in using them is supported by TA classes in which possible solutions to exercises, problems and cases related to the subjects dealt with in the weekly classes are discussed. Therefore, students should prepare, preferably in groups, solutions to the exercises, problems and minor cases for the TA classes.

Further, two assignments are to be solved by students individually - the students will give peer-feedback to other students and will receive peer-feedback from other students on these assignments. Participation in this activity is voluntary.

Scheduled classes:
2 hours weekly classes for 15 weeks equally spread across the semester plus 2 hours student teacher’s assistant classes (TA classes) every second week.

Workload:
Class hours: 30 hours.
Preparation for classes: 39 hours.
TA classes: 14 hours.
Preparation for TA classes: 22,5 hours.
Solving assignments including the provision of peer-feedback: 8 hours.
Preparation for exams: 18,5 hours.
Exams: 3 hours.

Total: 135 hours.