Managerial and Cost Accounting

Management accounting in practice

This intermediate University of California, Santa Barbara course is about the internal side of accounting: the information managers use to plan, control and decide. It sits between financial reporting and the decisions that follow from it.

Budgets, costs and decisions

The core skills are budgeting, cost accounting and cost control, followed by the decision-making frameworks that use cost data. Learners who have seen financial statements before will find the same numbers read for a different purpose here: to guide action rather than to report results.

Practical steps

• Trace one business cost from its source document to a budget line.
• Test how a small change in cost alters a decision you have to make.
• Compare internal cost reports with the external statements you already know.