Absorption Costing

Absorption costing is the original technique to deal with indirect costs, therefore, it is also called “Traditional Costing”. This method is an easy way to allocate overheads to products and services in practice although it can give inaccurate figures allocated to different products and services in complex manufacturing scenarios. In my experience,...

Activity-Based Costing

Activity-Based costing (ABC) is a relatively new method of calculating total cost for products and services. Although in the classroom exercises and exam questions, this method may seem similar to Absorption Costing, in practice it is very different and much more precise technique than absorption costing. ABC records all activities in an organis...

Target Costing

We have discussed earlier in this book that one of the main reasons for calculating total cost of a product/ service is to establish a price for it. Many organisations produce a product, establish the total cost and then add a mark-up to set a price for their products. Well – that’s what used to happen but not anymore in many sectors. After glob...

Introduction to Financial Accounting and Financial Statements

Introduction to Financial Accounting and Financial Statements Financial Accounting function (or accounting in general) act as a part of the information system for the business. Organisations invest large amounts of money in information system to collects relevant data which can be beneficial for them. This data is then converted into information b...

What is a “Transaction?

It is a legal responsibility of businesses to keep records for all business transactions. This article explains this term in simple words. Financial Accounting function mostly records data from within the organisation by recording business transactions. A transaction is an event which can be measured in monetary terms i.e. it has a financial value...

Introduction to Budgets

I have discussed this in my previous article “Introduction to Management Accounting” that there are three primary functions of management 1.Planning 2.Control and 3.Decision making. Budgeting is one of the most important tools used for planning and control purposes. However, these are not the only reasons budgeting is used in an organisation. T...

Elements of Financial statements – Part 1 Capital/Equity

 Elements of Financial Statements - Part 1 Capital/Equity When a transaction occurs, it affects one or more aspects of financial statements which are called elements of financial statements. The analysis of the transactions is carried out to decide ​which one or more elements needs updating as a result of the transaction. There are five elements ...

Understanding Profit or Loss Statement  (Income Statement)

The purpose of this article is to explain the contents of Profit or Loss Statement which can then be used for ratio analysis to analyse the company’s financial performance. As ratio analysis use many figures from Profit or Loss statement, without understanding this statement properly it would not be possible to carry out an accurate and comprehensive financial analysis of the company. 

Understanding Published Financial Statements Part 3 – Statement of Cashflow

Statement of cash flow is the third financial statement given in the annual reports. You would have noticed that all five elements of financial statements have already been covered by Statement of Profit or Loss (Income & Expense) and Statement of Financial Position (Assets, Liabilities and Capital). Therefore, a question arises on the purpose ...

Introduction to Business Plan

I have had many business ventures in life, some successful and some not so much. When a business idea gets stuck in my head, I tend to think about it all the time, trying to come up with a strategy to start the business, how to execute ideas and how to make it successful. And I use to think that I had the whole plan at the back of my head and there...

What is an executive summary?

Most of the modules in a university degree programme, undergraduate or postgraduate, require students to write coursework as part of their assessment. This coursework is mostly in an essay, research article or a paper format which have an “abstract” at the start to give readers a brief insight into the work and its contents. Abstracts are not...

What are Objectives for your coursework?

Aims and Objectives are the most important part of a report/coursework because without these your coursework has no direction and has no reason to be done. It is also a very simple (but fundamental) part because there's no technicalities involved in this section. One should get it right because usually aims and objectives are given in the assessmen...

Introduction to Ratios

This article will introduce you to the ratio analysis which is a simple but very important technique to analyse the financial statements. It's so simple to teach and understand that it is taught at the start of any accounting qualification. For example, it is taught at year one on an undergraduate accounting qualification. In fact, there is always ...