Cost Analysis and Control – Discover the importance of analyzing and managing costs!
Cost Analysis and Control is an essential topic in accounting and finance as its effects stretch to all departments and impact the financial position of the organization. Cost management covers several cost concepts such as job and batch orders and absorption costing.
The pinnacle of any cost management training is activity-based costing which helps in making better decisions. Among these decisions are whether to drop or keep a product, make or buy, and replace or keep a piece of equipment.
Moreover, cost management includes allocating costs of service departments internally. Also covered in this course are cost estimations and transfer pricing.
The course will close with evaluating performance and a brief discussion on the balanced scorecard and managing scarce resources.
In this Cost Analysis and Control course, you will examine management control systems as tools to implement and track strategy.
You will also see how management control systems can influence human behavior in organizations.
You will use “responsibility centers” to impact the control process, and you will analyze their underlying control techniques and various evaluation metrics.
The “profit center” approach is one of the most widely employed evaluation techniques to measure performance. You will gain a clear understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. You will also look at some methods used to measure profitability.
There is an aggressive drive to lower costs from world-wide sources, and the concept of inter-company “transfer prices” is a crucial management tool utilized to move products and services throughout the decentralized organizational structure.
You will complete an in-depth review of strategic planning and the resulting budget process.
This course aims at making this advanced subject easier for participants to understand by covering the material using several examples and exercises.
You might be interested in other Financial courses as a next step.
YOU WILL LEARN HOW TO
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
Discover the importance of analyzing and managing costs
Develop important tools for planning and decision making
Explain Activity-Based Costing (ABC) and Activity-Based Management (ABM)
Estimate costs and allocate them properly
Evaluate and manage performance through strategic cost management
IMPORTANT COURSE INFORMATION
Participants who fully attend this course and complete the test on the last day will receive a Strategic Axis Professional Certificate (SAPC). SAPC certificates are regionally recognized and can be quite valuable when applying for more senior roles within the organization or outside.
COURSE OUTLINE
Definition of cost management
Dimensions of cost management
Product costing systems: concepts and design issues
Cost behavior, types, and hierarchy
Cost accumulation job shop
Batch production operations
Variable versus absorption costing
Definition of cost management
Dimensions of cost management
Product costing systems: concepts and design issues
Cost behavior, types, and hierarchy
Cost accumulation job shop
Batch production operations
Variable versus absorption costing
Module 2: Cost management decisions
Decision-making process
Identifying relevant costs
Evaluating alternatives
Outsourcing decisions: make or buy
Add or drop product or business line
Replacing equipment
Special order pricing decisions
Module 3: Activity based management
ABC systems
Analyzing value-added versus nonvalue-added activities
Activity-based management
Managing customer profitability
Managing quality and time to create value
Module 4: Cost estimation and transfer pricing
Cost estimation techniques
Identifying and choosing a cost driver
Simple regression analysis
Multiple regression analysis
High-low method
Applications in Microsoft Excel
Allocating costs of support departments
Direct way
Step method
Reciprocal arrangement
Inter-group transfer pricing issues
Module 5: Evaluating and managing performance
Cost, volume, profit analysis
Breakeven point
The breakeven point for multiple products
Target income
Operating leverage
Margin of safety
Managing scarce resources
Flexible budget
Activity-based budgeting
Strategy, balanced scorecards, and performance measurement
