My Skill Lab
AccountingIntermediate

Management Accounting & Costing

Numbers for decisions, not just compliance.

Taught by Pooja Adhikari · Chartered Accountant

What you'll learn

  • Classify any cost as fixed, variable, stepped or mixed and split a mixed cost using the high-low method
  • Cost a product under marginal and absorption costing and reconcile the profit difference between them
  • Apply activity-based costing with cost drivers to expose products that volume-based overhead allocation hides
  • Run CVP analysis: contribution, breakeven units and revenue, margin of safety, and target-profit volume
  • Build a flexed budget and compute material, labour, overhead and sales variances, then explain their causes
  • Make make-or-buy, special-order, shutdown and limiting-factor decisions using relevant cash flows only

About this course

Financial accounting tells the outside world what already happened; management accounting helps you decide what to do next. This course teaches you to separate fixed from variable costs, cost a product three different ways, find the breakeven point, build and control a budget, and read variances like a story about what went right or wrong. By the end you will reach for contribution and relevant cost the way a chartered accountant does — and know exactly which costing method each decision demands.

Course content

8 lessons
  1. 1What Management Accounting Is — and Why It DiffersThe split between scorekeeping for outsiders and decision support for insiders.Preview
  2. 2Cost Behaviour: Fixed, Variable, Stepped and MixedHow costs respond to activity, and how to split a mixed cost with high-low.Preview
  3. 3Marginal vs Absorption CostingTwo ways to build a unit cost, and why their profits differ.
  4. 4Activity-Based Costing (ABC)Tracing overhead by what actually drives it, not by volume.
  5. 5Contribution and CVP / Breakeven AnalysisContribution, breakeven point, margin of safety and target profit.
  6. 6Budgeting: Building the Financial PlanFrom sales forecast to flexed budget, and the methods behind them.
  7. 7Variance Analysis: Reading the DifferenceSplitting actual-vs-budget gaps into price and quantity, with causes and owners.
  8. 8Relevant Costing for DecisionsMake-or-buy, special orders, shutdown and limiting-factor choices.