External Financial Reporting Decisions – 15%

• Financial statements
• Balance sheet
• Income statement
• Statement of changes in equity
• Statement of cash flows
• Integrated reporting

• Asset valuation
• Valuation of liabilities
• Equity transactions
• Revenue recognition
• Income measurement
• U.S. GAAP and IFRS

Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting – 20%

• Strategic planning
• Analysis of external and internal factors affecting strategy
• Long-term mission and goals
• Alignment of tactics with long-term strategic goals
• Strategic planning models and analytical techniques
• Characteristics of a successful strategic planning process

• Budgeting concepts
• Operations and performance goals
• Characteristics of a successful budget process
• Resource allocation
• Other budgeting concepts

• Budgeting methodologies
• Annual business plans (master budgets)
• Project budgeting
• Activity-based budgeting
• Zero-based budgeting
• Continuous (rolling) budgets
• Flexible budgeting

• Annual profit plan and supporting schedules
• Operational budgets
• Financial budgets
• Capital budgets

• Top-level planning and analysis
• Financial statement projections
• Cash flow projections

Performance Management – 20%

• Cost and variance measures
• Comparison of actual to planned results
• Use of flexible budgets to analyse performance
• Management by exception
• Use of standard cost systems
• Analysis of variation from standard cost expectations

• Responsibility centers and reporting segments
• Types of responsibility centers
• Transfer pricing
• Reporting of organizational segments

• Performance measures
• Product profitability analysis
• Business unit profitability analysis
• Customer profitability analysis
• Return on investment
• Residual income
• Investment base issues
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Balanced scorecard

Cost Management – 15%

• Measurement concepts
• Cost behavior and cost objects
• Actual and normal costs
• Standard costs
• Absorption (full) costing
• Variable (direct) costing
• Joint and by-product costing

• Costing systems
• Job order costing
• Process costing
• Activity-based costing
• Life-cycle costing

• Overhead costs
• Fixed and variable overhead expenses
• Plant-wide vs. departmental overhead
• Determination of allocation base
• Allocation of service department costs

• Supply chain management
• Lean resource management techniques
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Theory of Constraints
• Capacity management and analysis

• Business process improvement
• Value chain analysis
• Value-added concepts
• Process analysis, redesign, and standardization
• Activity-based management
• Continuous improvement concepts
• Best practice analysis
• Cost of quality analysis
• Efficient accounting processes

Internal Controls – 15%

• Governance, risk, and compliance
• Internal control structure and management philosophy
• Internal control policies for safeguarding and assurance
• Internal control risk
• Corporate governance
• External audit requirements

• System controls and security measures
• General accounting system controls
• Application and transaction controls
• Network controls
• Backup controls
• Business continuity planning

Technology and Analytics – 15%

• Information systems
• Accounting information systems
• Enterprise resource planning systems
• Enterprise performance management systems

• Data governance
• Data policies and procedures
• Life cycle of data
• Controls against security breaches

• Technology-enabled finance transformation
• System development life cycle
• Process automation
• Innovative applications

• Data analytics
• Business intelligence
• Data mining
• Analytic tools
• Data visualization