Controller's Guide to Costing Hardcover - 2005 - 1st Edition

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From the jacket flap

The modern corporate controller has many duties, including budgeting, tax planning, dealing with auditors, creating financial statements, and monitoring control systems. All are important, but at the core of the controller's job is a thorough understanding of a company's cost structure. Without this knowledge base, the controller is much less capable of predicting expenses, recommending operational changes, or evaluating the performance of business units. Controller's Guide to Costing covers every major costing methodology: the traditional job and process costing concepts, as well as direct costing, standard costing, and several inventory layering techniques.

Written by bestselling author Steven Bragg, who shares his decades of experience as a CFO for several major corporations, Controller's Guide to Costing provides a comprehensive, one-stop resource for controllers, treasurers, accountants, financial analysis personnel, and auditors. Accessible and easy to understand, this seminal work also addresses more specialized costing methodologies, such as throughput accounting for bottleneck analysis, target costing for new product decision-making, and activity-based costing for more precise cost application. These costing methodologies often vary considerably from each other in their purposes, so the book includes a costing systems summary that identifies which technique to use for different objectives. In addition, specific recommendations are made regarding such key management decisions as outsourcing, cost reduction analysis, scrap costing, and capacity utilization.

Controller's Guide to Costing examines control point issues associated with a costing system, with great focus on the advantages and disadvantages of each costing methodology, key terminology, and the flow of data through the system, including specific journal entries where applicable. It also addresses additional topics where they are relevant to a specific costing methodology, such as the impact of direct costing on reported financial results, the formulation of standard costs, the use of throughput accounting for capital budgeting decisions, joint cost allocation methods, and using a bill of activities within an activity-based costing system. Case studies elucidate key costing concepts wherever necessary.

By condensing a broad range of costing information into one comprehensive reference, Controller's Guide to Costing allows controllers to gain a solid understanding of every major costing methodology quickly and easily. However, this thorough book goes further to provide controllers with a wide array of costing tools to analyze and resolve many key management issues that will help them always retain their competitive edge in their field.