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Dr Farooq Mahmood

This course is compulsory on the BSc in Accounting and Finance. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

This is a half-unit course that introduces students to fundamental principles of management accounting. The course starts with a discussion of internal decision making and then provides an introduction to management and cost accounting. This includes the discussion of key concepts of cost calculation and various techniques of costing (such as absorption and variable costing approaches), as well as other alternative costing systems relevant for decision making. The aim is to help students understand how accounting information can help managers to make crucial decisions, such as about the pricing of products or services, or even whether to offer or discontinue a product or service, or whether to expand the product/service range or to invest in new product development. In summary, this part of the course focuses on the basic knowledge of management accounting - specifically, costing.

This course is delivered through two one and a half hour sessions each week in the Winter Term (11 weeks). The pedagogical approach in each session is interactive, often involving case study analyses and group discussions. This mode of teaching requires good advance preparation by the students; hence, every student should be ready to contribute to the discussion when called upon. Active participation is expected and encouraged.

There will be several online tests (“quizzes”) to test the student’s knowledge and progress on a formative basis for feedback. Written answers to numerical problems and discussion questions will be expected weekly; some of the written work will be collected for marking and feedback.

A detailed reading list will be made available on Moodle for each part of the course nearer the time of its scheduled start. Illustrative textbooks include:

• Atrill, P. and McLaney, E. (2018) Management Accounting for Decision Makers, 9th edition, Pearson;
• Atrill, P. (2017) Financial Management for Decision Makers, 8th edition, Pearson.

Exam (70%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the spring exam period.
Group assignment (30%) in the WT.