Management Accounting For Decision Makers, Tenth Edition
By Peter Atrill and Eddie McLaney
Contents:
Preface xvii
How to use this book xix
Acknowledgements xxi
1 Introduction to management accounting 1
Introduction 1
Learning outcomes 1
What is the purpose of a business? 2
How are businesses organised? 3
How are businesses managed? 6
Establish mission, vision and objectives 7
Undertake a position analysis 9
Identify and assess the strategic options 10
Select strategic options and formulate plans 10
Perform, review and control 10
The changing business landscape 11
What is the financial objective of a business? 12
Balancing risk and return 14
What is management accounting? 16
How useful is management accounting information? 18
Providing a service 18
Weighing up the costs and benefits 20
Management accounting as an information system 22
It’s just a phase 23
What information do managers need? 25
Reporting non-financial information 27
Influencing managers’ behaviour 28
Reaping the benefits of information technology 29
From bean counter to team member 30
Reasons to be ethical 32
Management accounting and financial accounting 34
Summary 36
Key terms 39
References 39
Further reading 39
Critical review questions 39
Exercises 40
2 Relevant costs and benefits for decision making 42
Introduction 42
Learning outcomes 42
Cost–benefit analysis 43
What is meant by ‘cost’? 44
Relevant costs: opportunity and outlay costs 46
Irrelevant costs: sunk costs and committed costs 49
Sunk cost fallacy 50
Determining the relevant cost of labour and materials 51
Labour 51
Materials 54
Non-measurable costs and benefits 56
Summary 58
Key terms 59
Further reading 59
Critical review questions 59
Exercises 60
3 Cost–volume–profit analysis 66
Introduction 66
Learning outcomes 66
Cost behaviour 67
Fixed cost 67
Variable cost 69
Semi-fixed (semi-variable) cost 70
Analysing semi-fixed (semi-variable) costs 70
Finding the break-even point 72
Contribution 78
Contribution margin ratio 79
Margin of safety 79
Achieving a target profit 81
Operating gearing and its effect on profit 82
Profit–volume charts 84
The economist’s view of the break-even chart 85
The problem of breaking even 87
Weaknesses of break-even analysis 87
Using contribution to make decisions: marginal analysis 90
Pricing/assessing opportunities to enter contracts 91
The most efficient use of scarce resources 93
Make-or-buy decisions 95
Closing or continuation decisions 97
Summary 100
Key terms 101
Further reading 101
Critical review questions 101
Exercises 102
4 Full costing 107
Introduction 107
Learning outcomes 107
What is full costing? 108
Why do managers want to know the full cost? 108
Single-product businesses 110
Process-costing problems 111
Multi-product businesses 113
Direct and indirect cost 114
Job costing 115
Full costing and cost behaviour 116
The problem of indirect cost 118
Overheads as service renderers 118
Job costing: a worked example 118
Selecting a basis for charging overheads 123
Segmenting the overheads 126
Dealing with overheads on a cost centre basis 127
Batch costing 137
Non-manufacturing overheads 139
Full (absorption) costing and estimation errors 140
Full (absorption) costing and relevant costs 141
Full (absorption) costing versus variable costing 142
Which method is better? 144
Summary 146
Key terms 148
Reference 148
Further reading 148
Critical review questions 148
Exercises 149
5 Costing and cost management in a
competitive environment 154
Introduction 154
Learning outcomes 154
Cost determination in the changed business environment 155
Costing and pricing: the traditional way 155
Costing and pricing: the new environment 155
Cost management systems 157
The problem of overheads 157
Taking a closer look 157
Activity-based costing 158
Assigning overheads 159
ABC and the traditional approach compared 160
ABC and service industries 161
Benefits and costs of ABC 165
ABC in practice 167
Managing costs over the product life cycle 169
Total life-cycle costing 170
Target costing 172
Kaizen costing 175
Other approaches to managing costs in the modern environment 178
Value chain analysis 178
Benchmarking 180
Total quality management 184
Managing quality costs 186
An alternative view 188
Summary 191
Key terms 192
Reference 192
Further reading 192
Critical review questions 193
Exercises 193
6 Budgeting 197
Introduction 197
Learning outcomes 197
How budgets link with strategic plans and objectives 198
Exercising control 199
Time horizon of plans and budgets 201
Budgets and forecasts 202
Periodic and continual budgets 202
Limiting factors 203
How budgets link to one another 203
How budgets help managers 206
The budget-setting process 208
Step 1: Establish who will take responsibility 208
Step 2: Communicate budget guidelines to relevant managers 208
Step 3: Identify the key, or limiting, factor 208
Step 4: Prepare the budget for the area of the limiting factor 209
Step 5: Prepare draft budgets for all other areas 209
Step 6: Review and coordinate budgets 209
Step 7: Prepare the master budgets 210
Step 8: Communicate the budgets to all interested parties 210
Step 9: Monitor performance relative to the budget 210
Using budgets in practice 211
Incremental and zero-base budgeting 213
Preparing budgets 216
The cash budget 216
Preparing other budgets 220
Activity-based budgeting 222
Non-financial measures in budgeting 225
Budgets and management behaviour 225
Problems with budgets 226
Beyond conventional budgeting 228
The future of budgeting 230
Summary 233
Key terms 234
References 234
Further reading 234
Critical review questions 235
Exercises 235
7 Accounting for control 243
Introduction 243
Learning outcomes 243
Budgeting for control 244
Types of control 245
Variances from budget 247
Flexing the budget 247
Sales volume variance 248
Sales price variance 251
Materials variances 252
Labour variances 253
Fixed overhead variance 254
Reconciling the budgeted profit with the actual profit 255
Reasons for adverse variances 259
Variance analysis in service industries 261
Non-operating-profit variances 261
Investigating variances 261
Variance analysis in practice 264
Compensating variances 264
Standard quantities and costs 265
Setting standards 266
Who sets the standards? 266
How is information gathered? 266
What kind of standards should be used? 267
The learning-curve effect 267
Other uses for standard costing 268
Some problems 269
The new business environment 271
Making budgetary control effective 272
Behavioural issues 273
Failing to meet the budget 274
Budgets and management autonomy 275
Types of management control 275
Direct control 275
Indirect control 276
Summary 278
Key terms 280
Reference 280
Further reading 280
Critical review questions 281
Exercises 281
8 Making capital investment decisions 286
Introduction 286
Learning outcomes 286
The nature of investment decisions 287
Investment appraisal methods 288
Accounting rate of return (ARR) 290
ARR and ROCE 291
Problems with ARR 292
Payback period (PP) 294
Problems with PP 296
Net present value (NPV) 298
Why does time matter? 299
Interest lost 299
Risk 299
Inflation 300
What should managers do? 300
Dealing with the time value of money 301
Calculating the net present value 303
Using present value tables 304
The discount rate and the cost of capital 305
Why NPV is better 306
NPV and economic value 306
Internal rate of return (IRR) 307
Problems with IRR 310
Some practical points 311
Investment appraisal in practice 314
Investment appraisal and strategic planning 317
Managing investment projects 318
Stage 1: Determine investment funds available 318
Stage 2: Identify profitable project opportunities 319
Stage 3: Evaluate the proposed project 319
Stage 4: Approve the project 319
Stage 5: Monitor and control the project 320
Summary 323
Key terms 324
References 325
Further reading 325
Critical review questions 325
Exercises 326
9 Managing risk 333
Introduction 333
Learning outcomes 333
Dealing with risk 334
Assessing the level of risk 334
Sensitivity analysis 334
Strengths and weaknesses of sensitivity analysis 341
Scenario analysis 343
Expected values 343
Reacting to the level of risk 351
Summary 352
Key terms 353
Further reading 354
Critical review questions 354
Exercises 354
10 Strategic management accounting: performance
evaluation and pricing in a competitive environment 360
Introduction 360
Learning outcomes 360
What is strategic management accounting? 361
Facing outwards 362
Competitor analysis 362
Customer profitability analysis 366
Competitive advantage through cost leadership 370
Non-financial measures of performance 372
The balanced scorecard 373
Scorecard problems 380
Measuring shareholder value 380
The quest for shareholder value 381
How can shareholder value be created? 381
The need for new measures 382
Economic value added (EVA®) 383
Shareholder value-based management in practice 388
Just another fad? 389
Pricing 389
Economic theory 389
Some practical considerations 397
Full cost (cost-plus) pricing 398
Pricing on the basis of marginal cost 400
Target pricing 402
Pricing strategies 402
Summary 406
Key terms 407
References 407
Further reading 407
Critical review questions 408
Exercises 408
11 Measuring divisional performance 413
Introduction 413
Learning outcomes 413
Divisionalisation 414
Why do businesses divisionalise? 414
Devolving decisions 414
Divisional structures 416
Is divisionalisation a good idea? 416
Measuring divisional profit 421
Contribution 421
Controllable profit 422
Divisional profit before common expenses 422
Divisional profit for the period 423
Divisional performance measures 424
Return on investment (ROI) 424
Residual income (RI) 428
Looking to the longer term 429
Comparing performance 431
EVA® revisited 432
Transfer pricing 433
The objectives of transfer pricing 434
Transfer pricing and tax mitigation 436
Transfer pricing policies 438
Market prices 438
Variable cost 439
Full cost 439
Negotiated prices 440
Divisions with mixed sales 441
Differential transfer prices 443
Transfer pricing and service industries 445
Non-financial measures of performance 445
What is measured? 446
Choosing non-financial measures 449
Who should report? 449
Summary 451
Key terms 453
Further reading 453
Critical review questions 454
Exercises 454
12 Managing working capital 459
Introduction 459
Learning outcomes 459
What is working capital? 460
Managing working capital 461
The scale of working capital 461
Managing inventories 464
Budgeting future demand 466
Financial ratios 466
Recording and reordering systems 466
Levels of control 469
Inventories management models 471
XYZ inventories management 477
Managing trade receivables 478
Which customers should receive credit and how much should they be
offered? 479
Length of credit period 480
An alternative approach to evaluating the credit decision 483
Cash discounts 484
Debt factoring and invoice discounting 485
Credit insurance 485
Collection policies 485
Reducing the risk of non-payment 489
Managing cash 490
Why hold cash? 490
How much cash should be held? 490
Controlling the cash balance 491
Cash budgets and managing cash 492
Operating cash cycle 493
Cash transmission 497
Bank overdrafts 498
Managing trade payables 498
Taking advantage of cash discounts 499
Controlling trade payables 500
Managing working capital 500
Summary 503
Key terms 505
Further reading 506
Critical review questions 506
Exercises 507
Appendix A Glossary of key terms 513
Appendix B Solutions to self-assessment questions 522
Appendix C Solutions to critical review questions 534
Appendix D Solutions to selected exercises 544
Appendix E Present value table 584
Index 587
Credits 601