I. FOCUS ON DECISION MAKING 1. Managerial Accounting, the Business Organization, and Professional Ethics   2. Introduction to Cost Behavior and Cost-Volume Relationships  3. Measurement of Cost Behavior   4. Cost Management Systems and Activity-Based Costing   5. Relevant Information for Decision Making with a Focus on Pricing Decisions   6. Relevant Information for Decision Making with a Focus on Operational Decisions   II. ACCOUNTING FOR PLANNING AND CONTROL 7. Introduction to Budgets and Preparing the Master Budget  8. Flexible Budgets and Variance Analysis   9. Management Control Systems and Responsibility Accounting   10. Management Control in Decentralized Organizations   III. CAPITAL BUDGETING 11. Capital Budgeting   IV. PRODUCT COSTING 12. Cost Allocation   13. Accounting for Overhead Costs  14.  Job-Costing and Process-Costing Systems   V. BASIC FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING 15. Basic Accounting: Concepts, Techniques, and Conventions   16. Understanding Corporate Annual Reports: Basic Financial Statements   17. Understanding and Analyzing Consolidated Financial Statements  

Understanding Why: Most managers would likely agree that understanding concepts is more important than memorizing techniques. This text focuses on  why companies use various techniques, rather than have students blindly apply the concepts.  Seeing the concepts in many areas of the field: All business sectors discussed. The concepts found in this text do not solely apply to large corporations, which is why nonprofit, retail, wholesale, service, selling, manufacturing, and administrative situations are addressed throughout.  Presenting the basics up-front: The core concepts and principles are explained in the first few chapters and are then revisited, where applicable, at more complex levels throughout the remainder of the text. Covering the fundamental concepts in the first few chapters helps to equip students with a foundation that they can use to apply to the more challenging material.  Taking out the guesswork: Real-world business examples are provided so that students don’t have to imagine how techniques will work in today’s businesses. These examples—which are drawn from actual companies that students know and trust such as Starbucks, Boeing, AT&T, McDonald’s, and Microsoft—are presented with relevant subject matter, clearly and accessibly, throughout the text.