Accounting 2 Test 1 Flashcards
Financial Accounting
Concerned with reporting financial information to external parties, such as stockholders, creditors, and regulators.
Managerial Accounting
Concerned with providing information to managers for use within the organization.
Segment
Part or activity of an organization about which managers would like cost, revenue, or profit data. Ex. product geographic territories, divisions, plants, and departments.
Planning
Involves establishing goals and specifying how to achieve them.
Controlling
Involves gathering feedback to ensure that the plan is being properly executed or modified as circumstances change.
Decision Making
Involves selecting a course of action from competing alternatives.
Three Vital Activities of Managers
Planning, Controlling, and Decision Making
Budget
Detailed plan for the future that is usually expressed in formal quantitative terms.
Performance Report
Compares budgeted data to actual data in an effort to identify and learn from excellent performance and to identify and eliminate sources of unsatisfactory performance. Also used to evaluate and reward employees.
Strategy
Game plan that enables a company to attract customers by distinguishing itself from competitors.
Enterprise Risk Management
Process used by a company to identify risks and develop responses to them that enable it to be reasonably assured of meeting its goals.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Concept whereby organizations consider the needs of all stakeholders when making decisions. Extends beyond legal compliance.
Business Process
Series of steps that are followed in order to carry out some task in a business.
Value Chain
Consists of major business functions that add value to a company’s products and services.
Lean Production
Management approach that organizes resources such as people and machines around the flow of business processes and that only produces units in reponse to customer orders.
Account Analysis
Method for analyzing cost behavior in which an account is classified as either variable or fixed based on the analyst’s prior knowledge of how the cost in the account behaves.
Activity Base
Measure of whatever causes the incurrence of a variable cost. Ex. Total cost of x-ray film in a hospital will increase as the number of x-rays taken increases. Therefore, the number of x-rays is the activity base that explains the total cost of x-ray film.
Administrative Costs
All executive, organizational, and clerical costs associated with the general management of an organization rather than with manufacturing or selling.
Committed Fixed Costs
Investments in facilities, equipment, and basic organizational structure that can’t be significantly reduced even for short periods of time without making fundamental changes.
Common Cost
Cost that is incurred to support a number of cost objects but that cannot be traced to them individually. Ex. Wage cost of the pilot of a 747 airliner is a common cost of all of the passengers on the aircraft. Without the pilot, there would be no flight and no passengers. But no part of the pilot’s wage is caused by any one passenger taking the flight.
Contribution Approach
Income statement format that organizes costs by their behavior. Costs are separated into variable and fixed categories rather than being separated into product and period costs for external reporting purposes.
Contribution Margin
Amount remaining from sales revenues after all variable expenses have been deducted.
Conversion Cost
Direct labor cost plus manufacturing overhead cost.
Cost Behavior
Way in which a cost reacts to changes in the level of activity.
Cost Object
Anything for which cost data are desired. Examples of cost objects are products, customers, jobs, and parts of the organization such as departments or divisions
Cost Structure
Relative proportion of fixed, variable, and mixed costs in an organization.
Dependent Variable
Variable that responds to some causal factor; total cost is the dependent variable, as represented by the letter Y, in the equation Y=a+bX.
Differential Cost
Difference in revenue between two alternatives.
Differential Revenue
Difference in revenue between two alternatives.
Direct Cost
Cost that can be easily and conveniently traced to a specified cost object.