Management Accounting - More Budgeting

More budgeting

Moving on from the last post, let's talk more about how budgets work and what they're made of.

Standard costs and variances

Standard costs are the planned cost (per unit) of products or services produced. You can also have standard revenues that work the same way.

Management Accounting - Budgeting

Budgeting

Preparing budgets is what happens right after making long term strategic plans. Budget adjustment sometimes occurs after variances are observed.

A budget is pretty much three smaller budgets that combine to make a 'superbudget' of sorts:

Master budget

=

Budgeted balance sheet

AND

Budgeted income statement

AND

Budgeted cash flow statement

Budgets have 5 main benefits:

1. Promote forward thinking


2. Co-ordinate various business areas


3. Provide an authorisation system


4. Provides a system of control


5. Motivates managers to perform better

We'll talk now about how a budget is made and then go through an example or two.

Software Engineering – (System) Sequence Diagrams

Now it times to learn all about how to create a (System) Sequence Diagram (SSD).

Note: not to be confused with State Diagrams, hehe ;)

Software Engineering – Activity Diagrams

Its time to demonstrate how to produce an Activity Diagram – here we go.

Management Accounting - Pricing

Pricing

If you have a business you want to make sure that you price your products and services appropriately. Your prices should be consistent with the business strategy and also linked to the cost of producing the product or service.

Two pieces or terminology to remember:

• Price makers: Set their own price


• Price takers: Have to accept what the market dictates (this can be either a competitor or a customer)

You've probably heard of supply and demand before. The basic premise here with supply and demand is that if you sell lots of a product you can afford to reduce the price per unit, and conversely if your sales are low you'll have to increase the price.

Management Accounting - ABC

ABC

(It's as easy as 123)

ABC stands for Activity Based Costing. It has a few benefits, such as:

• It provides more accurate costs for each unit of a product (or service)


• It gives a better understanding of the business to managers

It's fairly simple to the more traditional costing methods we've looked at already, but with a key difference: ABC looks at activities as a way of accumulating costs, instead of the old method of using cost centres. So with ABC the costs will be driven by:

Management Accounting - Costs On A Departmental Basis

Dealing with overhead costs on a departmental basis

In previous posts we've addressed what full costing is and how overheads can be applied in different ways. Now it's time to talk about how the overheads can be sorted into departments.

Think about a medium to large sized business. They are often separated into departments, for example, sales, customer service, manufacturing etc. So what if, when a product's cost is calculated, the overheads were allocated depending on how long the product spends in a certain department?

Instead of departments, we'll refer to the different business areas as cost centres. There can be two types of these:

Software Engineering – Object-Oriented Modelling

So, this is it. This is the post that ties all the previous three together! That is:

1. Class Modelling


2. Functional Modelling


3. Behavioural Modelling

So lets have a look then shall we at Object-Oriented Modelling :)

Software Engineering – The Behavioural Model

this post is the final post of the three main modelling systems in Software Engineering. So far we have seen Class and Functional Modelling; now it’s time to take a look at Behavioural Modelling! :)

Software Engineering – The Functional Model

In this post we talk all about Functional Modelling. This post is a semi-continuation from the previous one on Class Modelling.

Software Engineering – The Class Model

Hey everyone it’s Badgerati again :D Sorry i haven't exactly posted anything in 3 weeks… But if everything goes to plan, there should be 3 updates tonight!

So, lets get them all started with Class Modelling! :)

Globalisation - Skepticism

Skepticism

There are plenty of people who doubt that we live in a globalised society. There are 9 main points to their arguments. This post will outline each of the points in turn.

Globalisation isn't a new thing

The most famous text to give this argument is 'Globalization in Question' by Hirst and Thompson. One of their main points is that international trade has been around in history for a while and isn't new. You might they say have a point. Spices and fabrics and things of that nature have been shipped all over the world for centuries. The banana was first brought to Britain in the 1800s.

Globalisation - Introduction

Introduction to globalisation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization

Globalisation (Note: You might see it spelt with a 'Z'.. American spelling) is pretty much the spread of a uniformity that eliminates cultural nuances and creates a standardisation.

Think about 40 years ago. If you lived in the UK, were out and wanted a hamburger, the only available fast food chain was Wimpy, famed for it's horribly named 'Bender Burger'. But basically, that was the only place you could go. And it was innately British: The food came with a knife and fork, and on a plate. I wasn't born back then but I can only assume it completed the British theme by having the food brought to you by a comically rude waiter who is inexplicably upper class. Basil Fawlty was probably involved. But what I'm trying to get at is that it was definitely a British thing.