I. FOCUS ON DECISION MAKING Managerial Accounting, the Business Organization, and Professional EthicsIntroduction to Cost Behavior and Cost-Volume RelationshipsMeasurement of Cost BehaviorCost Management Systems and Activity-Based CostingRelevant Information for Decision Making with a Focus on Pricing DecisionsRelevant Information for Decision Making with a Focus on Operational Decisions II. ACCOUNTING FOR PLANNING AND CONTROL Introduction to Budgets and Preparing the Master BudgetFlexible Budgets and Variance AnalysisManagement Control Systems and Responsibility AccountingManagement Control in Decentralized Organizations III. CAPITAL BUDGETING Capital Budgeting IV. PRODUCT COSTING Cost AllocationAccounting for Overhead CostsJob-Costing and Process-Costing Systems V. BASIC FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING Basic Accounting: Concepts, Techniques, and ConventionsUnderstanding Corporate Annual Reports: Basic Financial StatementsUnderstanding 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. Tailoring the material to your course structure: Two different versions of the text Introduction to Management Accounting, 15e (Chapters 1–14), provides a concise treatment of management accounting topics suitable for a one-term course.Introduction to Management Accounting, 15e (Chapters 1–17), includes three financial accounting chapters in addition to the fourteen management accounting chapters. This version is especially suited for continuing education or MBA courses where students need to learn financial and management accounting in a one-term course. The financial accounting chapters also provide material for any student who may need a financial accounting review. Helping students have more “I Get It!” Moments: MyAccountingLab. This text is integrated with MyAccountingLab—Pearson’s web-based, tutorial and assessment software for accounting that not only gives students more "I Get It!" moments, but gives instructors the flexibility to make technology an integral part of their course. The problems available in MyAccountingLab are mapped to each of chapter’s learning goals in Introduction to Management Accounting, helping students focus their practice on the most important concepts in the text. Visit www.myaccountinglab.com for more information. Learning in progression : Concepts that build. This text begins by presenting material that helps students answer the question: “How will my decisions affect the costs and revenues of the organization?” The text then progresses to answering more complex questions such as: “What is the most appropriate cost-management system for the company?” “What products or services should we emphasize?” “What do our budget variances mean?”

T> New and revised “Business First” boxes provide insights into operations at well-known organizations, including Microsoft, General Electric, Southwest Airlines, Harley-Davidson, Nortel Networks, and Harvard University.New and revised chapter-opening vignettes help students understand accounting’s role in current business practice. We revisit the chapter-opening company throughout the chapter so that students can see how accounting influences managers in real companies. Students will recognize many of the companies, such as Starbucks, Boeing, US Airways, McDonald’s, Nike, and Dell.A problem in each chapter based on Nike’s Form 10-K. These problems illustrate how publicly available information can lead to insights about a company, its costs, and its management decisions.Increased coverage of ethics, including an ethics problem in each chapter’s assignment material.End-of-chapter material includes many new and significantly revised exercises and problems to provide fresh, new examples. Chapter-by-Chapter Changes: Chapter 1 emphasizes the importance of accounting information for decision makers and the role of accounting systems in control. The chapter continues to emphasize the importance of ethics in business, with a section devoted to “Ethical Conduct for Professional Accountants.” The authors shortened the discussion of entry-level careers in accounting and expanded the discussion of trends in management accounting. Chapter 2 is a major update in the 16th edition. The discussion of mixed-cost and step-cost behavior has been moved up to this chapter, immediately following the discussion of fixed- and variable-cost behavior. Also, degree of operating leverage is defined and illustrated with an example. Chapter 3 has been reorganized and provides a more focused discussion of cost behavior and cost estimation, as well as an enhanced examination of regression analysis. Chapter 4 uses Dell as the primary example throughout the chapter, and in this edition the authors discuss Dell's strategic decision to shift their product mix away from consumer sales and toward enterprise solutions and services. The authors describe how cost management systems at Dell support strategic decisions as well as operational control. The discussion of cost categories and cost terminology has been rewritten and refined. Chapter 5 features an enhanced focus on pricing, and a refined discussion of the accounting formats that aid in such decision making, namely the absorption versus contribution margin approaches. We compare and contrast these two approaches throughout the chapter. Chapter 6 has been edited to enhance operating decisions and the incremental analysis framework. The decision-making focus was further emphasized and related examples and problems were revised and updated. Chapter 7 emphasizes the importance of budgets for both planning and control. The second half of the chapter illustrates the details of preparing a budget using the Cooking Hut example used in previous editions. Chapter 8 has been reorganized to develop variance concepts in smaller steps. Basic variance concepts and terminology are introduced at the beginning of the chapter. The example introduced at the beginning of the chapter is first used to illustrate the static-budget variances for income. Then the static-budget variance is analyzed as the sum of activity-level and flexiblebudget variances. Then, income variances are analyzed as more detailed revenue and cost variances. Finally, flexible-budget variances are divided into price and quantity variances (for materials and labor) or spending and efficiency variances (for variable overhead). Chapter 9 includes multiple examples of performance evaluation and incentive issues for service organizations such as health-care organizations and hotels. The authors use the balance scorecard as an integrated framework to consider both financial and non-financial performance measures. The penultimate section of the chapter outlines issues of designing and implementing management control systems for service and nonprofit organizations. In Chapter 10, learning objectives 4 and 5 have been revised, where objective 5 now focuses on the incentives created by alternative performance measures. The authors also revised the discussion of alternative measures of performance and profitability. Chapter 11 includes a detailed, step-by-step example of calculation of net present value (NPV). The discussion of the internal rate of return formulation, and its relation to the NPV formulation, has also been expanded, though the chapter continues to primarily focus on the NPV model. The discussion of tax effects has also been further clarified. Chapter 12 includes extensive revisions for clarity throughout the chapter. The general guidelines for allocating service department costs have been revised and condensed and the section showing how to apply the guidelines has been reorganized. The steps in ABC cost allocation were reduced from 4 to 3 and their description extensively revised. Finally, the discussion of which department to allocate first in step-down allocations moved from a footnote to the text. Chapter 13 includes an enhanced discussion of overhead cost allocation and disposition of overhead variances. The complex discussion of variances was clarified as were the the related problems and examples. Chapter 14 has been revised to clarify the discussion throughout the chapter, especially regarding job-order costing and process costing. These two systems are explained in more detail, and are compared and contrasted in a more meaningful way. Chapter 15 includes updates to the General Mills examples throughout the chapters as well as to the Business First box on corporate citizenship awards. Revisions for clarity include an expanded discussion of accrued revenues and accrued expenses, a major revision of the presentation of the first 7 transactions of King Hardware, an added balance sheet after transaction 2 to show how a balance sheet changes with each transaction, and a revision of the section on nonprofit organizations. In Chapter 16, in addition to updating the Nike examples throughout, there is a revised discussion of goodwill, an expanded coverage of diluted EPS, and coverage of the FASB/IASB proposal that would mandate the direct method for the cash flow statement. Chapter 17 includes a new learning objective on using financial statement analysis, a new section showing how income statements and balance sheets show noncontrolling interests, and a new line in all consolidation tables to clarify the totals before eliminating entries. Finally, the authors have updated all financial statement references throughout.