Midterm #2 Flashcards
Why is business success a three-legged stool?
- Knowledge and commitment to make a great product
- The ability to sell your product
- Accounting
What is goal congruence?
Need to align incentives to create, managers and employees
How do we align goals?
- Policies and procedures
- Monitoring
- Incentives and performance evaluation
What is the role of accounting?
Help decision makers measure the costs and benefits of decision options
What are the two classes of decision makers?
Outside the firm and inside the firm
External = financial accounting
Internal = managerial accounting
What is the information used for in terms of External Decision Makers?
The information being provided for the purposes of creating/setting up the Financial Statements
What is the information used for in terms of Internal Decision Makers?
The information is being provided primarily for the purpose of helping the business to run better
What are the time focuses for Managerial vs Financial Accounting?
F - historical perspective
M - future oriented
Emphasis on..? Managerial vs Financial
F - objectivity and verifiability
M - relevance for planning and control
What is the main importance? Managerial vs Financial
F - precision of information
M - timeliness of information
What is the subject focus? Managerial vs Financial
F - summarized data for the whole organization
M - detailed segment reports of an organization
Does it have to follow GAAP or prescribed formats? Managerial vs Financial
F - YES
M - NO
Who are the key financial players in organization (the big three)
- Shareholders
- Board of Directors
- CFO
Shareholders manage the company indirectly though Board of Directors
What is the CFO’s job?
- Maintaining the accounting records
- Maintaining an adequate system of internal control
- Preparing financial statements, tax returns, internal reports
What is Strategic Management?
- The art and science of formulating, implementing, and evaluating cross-functional decisions that enable an organization to achieve its objectives
- A company’s game plan.
What are the Three Broad Management Functions?
- Planning
- Directing
- Controlling
What is Planning?
- Looking ahead and establishing objectives
- Identify alternatives, select alternative that does the best job of furthering goals, develop budgets to guide progress towards the selected alternative
What is Directing?
- Involves coordinating a company’s diverse activities and human resources to produce a smoothly running operation
- Day-to-day activities
- Routine problem solving, conflict resolution, effective communication
What is Controlling?
- The process of keeping the company’s activities on track (compare actual performance to budget performance)
- Check at regular intervals, best used in smaller operation
What are The IMA’s Statement of Ethical Professional Practice code of conduct?
- Competence
- Confidentiality
- Integrity
- Credibility
What is Competence?
- Maintaining professional competence
- Prepare complete and clear reports
What is Confidentiality?
- Refraining from disclosing confidential info
- Refrain from using confidential info for unethical and illegal advantage
What is Integrity?
- Avoid conflicts of interest
- Refrain from supporting any activity that would discredit accounting
What is Credibility?
- Communicate info fairly and objectively
- Disclose all relevant info
What is Corporate Social Responsibility?
- Should evaluate not just profits, but also CSR
- Performance with regard to people, planet, and profit/sustainable approach (triple bottom line)
What is Just in Time Inventory?
- Goods are manufactured just in time for use
- Could become obsolete (not valuable anymore, grows old)
What is Theory of Constraints?
- Focus on bottlenecks (the thing that is holding up the production process)
- Once a major constraint has been identified and eliminated, the company moves on to fix the next most significant constraint
What is Value Chain?
- All activities associated with providing a product or service
- Research and development, getting raw materials, product design, production, sales and marketing, delivery, customer relations
What is Activity Based Costing?
- Overhead is allocated based on each products use of economic resources as it undergoes various activities
What is Total Quality Management?
- Systems to reduce defects in finished products
- Requires timely data on defective products, rework costs and the cost of honour warranty contacts
What is Balanced Scorecard?
- A performance measurement approach that uses both financial and non financial measures to evaluate all aspects of a companies operations in an integrated way
Cost Behaviour
How a cost will react to changes in the level of business activity
Total variable costs compared to total fixed costs in regards to change
V - changes when activity changes
F - remains unchanged
Classification by Controllability
- A cost which is capable of being regulated by a manager.
- A non-controllable cost is one which is not capable of being regulated by a manager.
Cost of Goods Sold Equation
Beginning inventory + Additions - Ending inventory
What is Direct Material?
The cost of raw material that is used to make, and can be conveniently traced, to the finished product.
Ex. steel, aluminum, glass
What is Direct Labour?
Cost of salaries, wages, and fringe benefits for personnel who work directly on manufactured products.
Ex. wages paid to a worker, salary paid
What is Manufacturing Overhead?
All other manufacturing costs
What is Indirect Material?
Materials used to support the production process.
Examples: lubricants and cleaning supplies for factories
What is Indirect Labour?
Cost of personnel who do not work directly on the product.
Examples: maintenance workers and security guards.
What are budgets?
- Detailed plan that sets out, in monetary terms, plans for income and expenditures in a future period.
- Prepared in advance based on agreed objectives and strategy.
What is budgetary control?
Using budget reports to compare actual results with planned objectives