Management Accounting for Decision Making

Prof. Narasimhan M S
Financial Accounting and Cost Accounting

Hello! Welcome to this course on Management Accounting. I am Narasimhan, and your faculty for this
course.
Many of you would have completed the first basic course on Financial Accounting. Financial
Accounting is bit technical with a good amount of rules and regulations. Often, trained and certified
accountants perform financial accounting jobs. Management Accounting is relatively simple. The
principles are consistent with the common sense. This is actually accounting for managers. That is, all
managers perform management accounting functions when they use accounting information for
planning, controlling, and decision making.
If you're already a manager or going to take up a managerial job after your graduation, you will use
many of the learning of this course. As you go more in your managerial career, you will increasingly
use accounting information. I'll try to show as much as possible on the practice side, and you will also
do few cases. This would help you in appreciating the real-world application of management
accounting principle.
This course has six modules. In the first week, we will discuss an overview of management accounting
course. We also learn few terms that are used in management accounting. Managers need good
amount of cost data in planning, controlling, and decision making. In Week 2, we will see the basics of
product costing. Week 3 is an extension of product costing. In this week, we will learn how common
costs are allocated. We will also discuss a new system of costing, called Activity Based Costing, during
this week. In the following three weeks, we discuss topics related to decision making, planning, and
controlling.
To sum up, the course has four objectives. The number one is how managers use accounting
information in their day to day activities. The second one is, how accounting information is used for
operating and strategic decision making. How planning is done by the managers using accounting
information is our third objective. And finally, how managers control the business with the help of
accounting information is our last objective.
As a part of the course, we will be doing large number of exercises. These exercises will help you to
see how accounting information is analysed by the manager.
Once again, I welcome you to this course on management accounting.

All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Prof. Narasimhan M S and is permitted for use only within the course,
Management Accounting for Decision Making, delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including
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