GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY School of Acctg 320 Issues in Modern Management Accounting Spring Semester 2012 Wednesday 5:00-6:40

Instructor: Ahmet Cagin Email: [email protected]

1. Course Description

Focuses on current trends in managing the accounting function within a for-profit organization and defines the role of top financial officers and the expertise they provide. Topics will demonstrate the accountant 146s role in the decision-making, implementation, and evaluation processes of the firm. Begins with study of cost management issues in depth, and then moves to advanced topics such as customer profitability, cash-flow estimation focusing on controllable costs, and capital budgeting and other investment decisions.

2. Prerequisites

Acctg 50 (Financial Accounting for Accounting Majors) Acctg 351A (Economics and Finance for Accountants)

3. Course Objectives

Students will:

• Understand basic cost terms and concepts • Evaluate product costing systems: job-order, process, activity based, JIT or hybrid • Use non-financial indicators to evaluate performance • Manage and properly allocate support-service costs • Understand and apply cost-volume-profit techniques • Prepare master and flexible budgets (with variance analysis) • Analyze complex ethical problems in accounting

4. Course Requirements

Sessions

Each Week: Sessions consist of reading, problem solving, presentation of assignments and in class discussions . Students will be required to exhibit an understanding of managerial accounting with an emphasis on practical application of this knowledge. Homework Assignments

I review these assignments to see that you have made an effort to complete them but I don’t grade them for accuracy. All homework must be done on a word-processing or spreadsheet computer program. Hand-written assignment will not be accepted .

Presentations Each week, a student or a group of students will present a portion of the homework on the board. Please note that everyone needs to complete the homework and just one individual or group will do the presentation each week.

Exams

The midterm and the final are both required. Failure to complete either test will result in an F for the class. Both the midterm and the final will be proctored. These are closed book, closed notes exams. Basic function calculators are allowed. No small computers, programmable calculators, or other devices that store data other than basic memory are allowed. Exams will have multiple choice and problems. Partial credit is awarded on exams for problems. (not multiple choice) when computations are shown. The best way to practice for the final exam is to solve homework and similar problems with your book and notes closed. The exams will be similar in difficulty to the CPA and CMA exams.

Article Write-ups

In order to keep the course current and relevant to what is happening in the real world, students are required to find and write up one article on management accounting subjects. The write ups are due one week prior to final. (April 18.) These articles can be obtained from the Wall Street Journal, the Journal of Cost Management, Week, Business Finance, Strategic Finance, the Journal of Accountancy, the Journal of Management Accounting Research, or any otherbusiness oriented publication. The GGU library web site contains links to the Infotrac and Proquest article databases. Since there is plenty of time to obtain and write up these articles, there will be no extensions of time. No credit will be allowed for late assignments. The topics must be related to Cost Management and NOT Financial Accounting.

Academic Integrity

Students are required to be honest in their work. Cheating and plagiarism (including copying the work of others and representing it as your own) are serious offenses that may result in an F for the assignment and/or class. All work on exams is to be the original work of the student, not shared work of a number of students, no help from people at home or work, etc. The exams are independent assignments. Students are encouraged to “discuss” homework, discussion questions and all non-exam assignments in the brainstorm each week.

5. Textbook(s) Required Text

Cost Management, Strategies for Business Decisions, Fourth Edition, by Hilton, Maher, and Selto. McGraw-Hill Irwin publishers 2008 ISBN # 978-0-07-352680-5

PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMIC TEXTBOOKS FROM PRIOR COURSE WORK (OPTIONAL, BUT USEFUL) Siegel, Joel, Jae Shim, and Nicky Dauber. Corporate Controller’s Handbook of Financial Management. Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997. Kieso, Donald and Jerry Weygandt. Intermediate Accounting . New York: John Wiley & Co., 2008. 12th Edition. Horngren, Charles T., George Foster, and Srikant M. Datar. Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003. Eleventh edition. Blocher, Edward, Kung Chen, and Thomas Lin. Cost Management: A Strategic Emphasis. New York City: Irwin Mc Graw Hill, 2002. Second edition. Cooper, Robin and Robert Kaplan. Harvard Business Review on Measuring Corporate Performance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1998. Roehl-Anderson, Janice and Steven Bragg. The Controller’s Function: The Work of the Managerial Accountant. Brealey and Myers. Principles of Corporate Finance. Irwin Mc Graw Hill, 2004. Seventh edition.

Important Websites:

Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) http://www.imanet.org American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) http://www.aicpa.org Society of Certified Public Accountants (CalCPA) http://www.calcpa.org Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) http://www.sec.gov Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/fasb Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/gasb Financial Management Association (FMA) http://www.fma.org

PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS: The Journal of Cost Management Business Week Wall Street Journal Journal of Management Accounting Research Business Finance Strategic Finance (formerly Management Accounting) Journal of Accountancy New York Time

6. Grading Policy

Assignment % of Grade Attendance/Participation 8% Homework Assignments 12% Presentations 7% Write-Up 8% Midterm 30% Final Exam 35% Total 100%

Final Grades Earned

Percentage Letter Grade 90-100% A 80-89% B 70-79% C 60-69% D Below 60% F

• Scale may be curved if to the benefit of students • Students must complete both exams or an F is earned

7. Office Hours

By Appointment and email [email protected]

8. Instructors Bio

Ahmet Cagin graduated from U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business with a concentration in Finance and Accounting. After his graduation, he spent his entire career in the banking industry. Before joining to Wells Fargo Bank, he was Vice President with JP Morgan Chase responsible for cost accounting practices related to direct mail marketing initiatives.

9. Learning Objectives

Please refer to the attachment for learning objectives for each session/chapter.

10. Homework Assignments / Presentations

Session Date Chapter Assignment Presenter 1 1/11 1 Chapter 1: 36,40 Cagin Wont be graded 2 1/18 2 Chapter 2: 45, 57, 64 3 1/25 3 Chapter 3:33,34,36,50 4 2/1 4 36,39,41,42 5 2/8 5 34,39,41,50 6 2/15 7 59,70,73,75 7 2/22 Midterm See Instructions 8 2/29 8 20,28,29,34 9 3/7 9 41,42,43,51 10 3/14 10 23,24,37,40 11 3/21 12 40,46,47,50,52 12 3/28 15 40,41,42 13 4/4 16 28,37,40 14 4/11 17 30,33,36,37 15 4/18 Final review Write-ups due 16 4/25 Final See Instructions