GoFast.Finance/CMA Part 1D: Cost Management

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CMA Part 1D: Cost Management

  • Course
  • 23 Lessons

Convert CMA cost management topics into practical costing, variance and improvement tools for your plant or business.

💡 Cost clarity: Understand cost behavior, costing systems and overhead allocation so exam questions and plant variances make sense.

🤝 Better collaboration: Talk with operations about standard costs, variances and improvement ideas using shared language.

♻️ Leaner processes: Spot where value chain, lean and cost of quality concepts can reduce waste and support decisions.

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Who this is for

Plant or site controllers and cost accountants managing standard costs, overhead allocation and cost variances in operations.

FP&A analysts and commercial controllers using cost data for pricing, margin analysis and product or customer decisions.

Prerequisites

Knowledge: Introductory management accounting and basic exposure to standard costing or cost allocation.

Tools: Spreadsheet skills and access to costing or variance data for practice scenarios.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Differentiate key cost concepts and behaviors in cost management scenarios.

  2. Apply job, activity based and other costing systems to exam style problems.

  3. Allocate overhead and service department costs using standard methods.

  4. Analyze process improvement opportunities using value chain, lean and cost of quality tools.

CPE Information

  • Eligibility: currently not eligible

  • Watch time: about 2.5 hours

  • Total learning: about 5 hours

  • Estimated credits: 3.0

Contents

Module 1: Cost concepts and behavior in daily work

Lesson 1: Types of cost and behavior in real cases
Lesson 2: Actual versus normal costing in reporting cycles
Lesson 3: Standard costing concepts for planning and control
Lesson 4: Absorption costing and inventory views
Lesson 5: Variable costing and contribution views

Module 2: Costing systems that trace costs to work

Lesson 6: Joint and by-product costing essentials
Lesson 7: Job order costing on projects and batches
Lesson 8: Activity based costing for overhead heavy environments
Lesson 9: Life cycle costing for long lived offerings
Lesson 10: Other costing systems

Module 3: Overhead structure and allocation decisions

Lesson 11: Fixed and variable overhead in planning
Lesson 12: Corporate and departmental overhead levels
Lesson 13: Choosing allocation bases that make sense
Lesson 14: Allocating service department costs

Module 4: Supply chain, lean and capacity views

Lesson 15: Lean resource management and waste in costs
Lesson 16: ERP and costing data flows
Lesson 17: Capacity management and analysis for controllers

Module 5: Process improvement, value and quality

Lesson 18: Value chain analysis for finance teams
Lesson 19: Value added versus non value added work
Lesson 20: Process analysis, redesign and standardization
Lesson 21: Continuous improvement concepts and Kaizen costing
Lesson 22: Benchmarking and best practice in cost work
Lesson 23: Cost of quality and failure costs