Course Category

SESSION ONE

• Key differences between external financial reporting and internally-prepared financial reports and product information.

Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis

• Impact of changes in sales and production activity on company profitability, due largely to the changing levels of fixed and variable costs at different levels of sales and production.

Operating Leverage

• Impact on profitability of a company's investment in fixed costs relative to its variable costs.

Sales and Product Mix Analysis

• Analysis of how changes in the product mix of units sold affect profitability, especially when the mix of units sold differs from the mix originally budgeted.

Special Pricing Decisions

• Relevant costing methods used to determine if it will be profitable to reduce the normal price on a special sales order.

Evaluating Divisions and Product Lines

• Methods for determining whether it makes financial sense to add or drop a division or product line (especially when it appears that the division or product line is generating an accounting loss).

Managing Usage of Limited Resources

• Using contribution margin analysis to determine which product or service will contribute the most dollars to profitability.

Target Costing & Pricing

• Analyzing markets and costs to determine the appropriate price to charge and what the ''target cost'' must be in order to realize the desired gross margin.

Make vs. Buy Decisions and Outsourcing

• Tools and techniques for assessing whether it makes financial sense to outsource a product or service or to keep making or providing that product or service in-house.

SESSION TWO

• Effective methods for measuring financial performance of a company, division, department, or business segment.

Balanced Scorecard

• A performance measurement system that links financial success to its underlying components of organizational learning, business process improvement, and customer satisfaction.

Controllable Cost Analysis

• A method of capturing and reporting financial information that clearly identifies and distinguishes how a division or segment is doing financially, from how effective a job the manager is doing in managing the resources under his or her direct control.

Transfer Pricing

• Principles and practices in how companies set prices for internally-transferred products and services in a manner that maximizes enterprise value without penalizing any one manager or division.

Return on Investment Measures

• Key measures for evaluating financial performance of a division or business unit, such as return on investment (ROI), and return on capital employed (ROCE), including a distinction between economic value and traditional accounting-based rate of return measures.

Cost Estimation Methods

• Common methods used by companies to estimate and allocate costs to products, services, and departments.

Activity-Based Costing

• An effective tool for more accurately allocating costs to products and services based on the cost and amount of the activities consumed in providing the applicable products and services.

Profitable Growth Through Acquisition

• Effective strategies and tools used for analyzing potential acquisitions of product lines in a manner that justifies the acquisition based on enhancements to shareholder value.