Fundamentals of Cost Accounting » (3rd Edition)

A Professor of Management at the University of California-Davis, Professor Maher previously taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, and the University of Washington. He also worked on the audit staff at Arthur Andersen & Co. and was a self-employed financial consultant for small -businesses. He received his BBA from Gonzaga University (which named him Distinguished Alumnus in 1989), and his MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Washington, and earned the CPA from the state of Washington.

Professor Maher is president of the Management Accounting Section of the American Accounting Association, and has served on the editorial boards of The Accounting Review, Accounting Horizons, Journal of Management Accounting Research, and Management Accounting. Co-author of two leading textbooks, Principles of Accounting and Managerial Accounting, Maher has co-authored several additional books and monographs, including Internal Controls in U.S. Corporations and Management Incentive Compensation Plans, and published articles in many journals, including Management Accounting, The Journal of Accountancy, The Accounting Review, The Journal of Accounting Research, Financial Executive, and The Wall Street Journal.

For his research on internal controls, Maher was awarded the American Accounting Association's Competitive Manuscript Award and the AICPA Notable Contribution to Literature Award. He has also received the award for the Outstanding Tax Manuscript, and from the students at the University of California's Graduate School of Management, he has received the Annual Outstanding Teacher Award three times and a special award for outstanding service twice

A direct, realistic, and efficient way to learn cost accounting. Fundamentals is short (approximately 700 pages) making it easy to cover in one semester. The authors have kept the text concise by focusing on the key concepts students need to master. Opening vignettes and In Action boxes show realistic applications of these concepts throughout. All chapters end with a “Debrief” that links the topics in the chapter to the decision problem faced by the manager in the opening vignette. Comprehensive end-of-chapter problems provide students with all the practice they need to fully learn each concept.

Introduction and Overview

1 Cost Accounting: Information for Decision Making

2 Cost Concepts and Behavior

Cost Analysis and Estimation

3 Fundamentals of Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis

4 Fundamentals of Cost Analysis for Decision Making

5 Cost Estimation

Cost Management Systems

6 Fundamentals of Product and Service Costing

7 Job Costing

8 Process Costing

9 Activity-Based Costing

10 Fundamentals of Cost Management

11 Service Department and Joint Cost Allocation

Management Control Systems

12 Fundamentals of Management Control Systems

13 Planning and Budgeting

14 Business Unit Performance Measurement

15 Transfer Pricing

16 Fundamentals of Variance Analysis

17 Additional Topics in Variance Analysis

18 Nonfinancial and Multiple Measures of Performance

Appendix: Capital Investment Decisions: an Overview