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
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
- 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