The Groundwork of Company Valuation for First-time Buyers and Sellers

A Basic Guide for Valuing a Company has helped thousands of first-time buyers and sellers realize a fair, substantiated value for small businesses. Now in its Second Edition, this book covers common valuation techniques and myths, tips for determining tangible and intangible values, sample balance sheets and income statements, and approaches to valuing start-up technology and dot-com businesses.

This nuts-and-bolts guide addresses publicly traded and privately held firms, including traditional brick-and-mortar companies and the intellectual property industry. With a clear, concise writing style, the author walks readers through common practices for valuing, from collecting data to arriving at a saleable figure for all types of businesses, including professional practice, manufacturing, wholesale distributors, and a variety of retail operations. This new edition features perspectives on nontraditional valuation practices, guidance for using an excess earnings method, and an abundance of case studies from actual companies.

In order to make the most profitable decisions, before putting a business on the market or making an offer to acquire one, every beginning business purchaser and seller should read A Basic Guide for Valuing a Company, Second Edition.

Corporate Accounting

The ABCs of ABM

Activity-based management (ABM) has already proven extremely valuable to manufacturers in helping them cut waste, improve quality, reduce cycle times, and get their products to market faster. Now revised and expanded, this indispensable resource illustrates how ABM can be applied to all types of organizations—including service groups, government agencies, and nonprofit entities—and any department within them.

Using a variety of examples, authors James A. Brimson and John Antos examine a company structure and break down its separate activities to measure each activity's cost/performance effectiveness. Introducing an innovative five-step approach to calculating activity cost, they provide tangible performance criteria linked to time, value, service, quality, flexibility, cost, and performance-to-schedule, and demonstrate how to use activity analysis to ensure that price structure is reflective of total costs.

A vital tool for modern times, this is essential reading for CEOs, operations executives, controllers, managers, and others who are seeking a comprehensive, up-to-date guide on activity-based management and its proper implementation.

Addressing the chronic underestimation of capital and operating costs in urban transportation projects, this book provides a detailed analysis of the cost estimating process using case studies from three U.S. cities and outlines a practical framework for this process. The work goes beyond a simple quantitative approach to explaining cost underestimation and looks at the planning process as a tool for both argumentation and structuring the argumentation. This approach highlights the difficulties in several components of the estimating process and suggests specific and practical actions to address these problems. The proposed framework will strengthen the estimating function and the link between analysis and decision in urban transportation planning. This work will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in transportation planning, urban planning, and transportation engineering.

"Cost Accounting for Managerial Planning, Decision Making and Control" emphasizes the analysis and evaluation of cost accounting information for managerial planning, control, and decision-making. Our goal is to help students (future managers) understand how cost accounting information adds value to an organization in a highly competitive business environment. The philosophy underlying the development of this book is that providing cost accounting information is primarily a logical process, rather than a procedural one. It is most important that students first understand the basic concepts and objectives, and then gain some experience in applying these concepts in different environments. Through this approach, students will be better equipped to deal with the unforeseen situations they will encounter in professional practice or on professional examinations. This philosophy is evident in each chapter, as basic concepts are presented and then illustrated with examples and a wide variety of homework problems.
This text is intended for use in undergraduate and graduate courses in cost accounting at both the basic and advanced levels. It provides a complete and concise coverage of topics commonly included in a basic course, with an in-depth coverage of selected topics more appropriate for an advanced course in cost accounting. Modular coverage of these topics permits the instructor to adapt the text to his or her own preferences for course content. Plus, an extremely clear writing style contributes to the ease with which students will comprehend the contents of each chapter. By emphasizing the differing uses for cost accounting information, our intent is to make the student an intelligent provider, user, and interpreter of this information.
Woody M. Liao is a Professor of Accounting at University of California - Riverside. He received his Ph.D. in Accounting from University of Florida, and his MBA from Illinois State University. Dr. Liao is a CPA and CMA. He has been invited and served as speaker and visiting scholar at University of Hawaii, Naval Postgraduate School, National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Dr. Liao has published numerous papers in leading accounting journals, and was named a Prolific Author in Accounting in 2002.
Andrew Schiff, CPA, is a Professor of Accounting in the College of Business and Economics at Towson University. He received his M.S. in Accounting from SUNY at Albany, and his Ph.D. from Rutgers University. His previous professional experience includes serving as an audit manager, assistant controller and controller in various organizations. Dr. Schiff has published in numerous academic and professional journals, and has coauthored or edited two other textbooks.
Hsihui Chang is the KPMG Professor and Department Head of Accounting in the LeBow College of Business at Drexel University. He obtained his Bachelor degree from the National Changhua University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Chang has published more than 60 articles in leading academic journals, and has received numerous awards for his research articles and one award for his outstanding teaching. He is professionally qualified as a CPA and a CMA, and has served as a consultant to several for-profit and non-profit organizations.
Stacy Kline, MBA, CPA has been a Clinical Associate Professor of Accounting at Drexel University for over fifteen years. Prior to joining the faculty at Drexel, she earned her MBA from Temple University and worked in public accounting for over nine years. Professor Kline has published articles, authored CPE courses and has served as a reviewer for a number of other CPE courses."

Activity-based pricing: the new paradigm for maximum profitability

Pricing for Profitability introduces activity-based pricing, a new paradigm for improving profitability by reducing the occurrence of pricing mistakes and placing less emphasis on increasing revenue and more on improving profits. Activity-based pricing will help any company set prices that are attractive to buyers and profitable for the company. Pricing for Profitability teaches activity-based pricing to help you make better pricing decisions based on customer demand and a better understanding of what really causes profits. It will help you prevent underpricing and generate a healthier financial return.

Simply organized and nontechnical, this in-depth treatment covers the ten vital topics of activity-based pricing. A wealth of examples that illustrate the points made in the text include activity-based pricing models used in real industries. Designed for everyone involved with the pricing process, Pricing for Profitability provides a comprehensive understanding of how to use pricing to gain the competitive advantage.

This major text covers all the introductory- and intermediate- level cost and management accounting topics in a clear, easy-to-follow, student-friendly style. It is designed for students doing A-Level accounting, accounting degrees or studying for any one of a large number of proffesional accounting qualifications. Written by a college lecturer and examiner with many years of practical cost and management accounting experience, the text uses a number of features to help students gain understanding and to give them the confidence to apply their knowledge: - step-by-step examples throughout the text to explain methods and concepts - a vast number of real examination questions, drawn from AEB, ULEAC, ICCI, RSA, ACCA, AAT, CIMA and undergraduate examination papers - a set of full model answers to all computational questions to facilitate unsupervised study - numerous diagrams and illustrations - key terms and concepts identified and defined in accordance with CIMA official terminology. The book is unique in its field, for it includes topics generally ignored at this level, for example techniques for planning and control of non-manufacturing costs such as distribution, selling and administration. It also provides students with a view of how cost and management accounting operates in the real world. It does this through providing two example sets of periodic management accounts probably the essential cost and management accounting tool. It also includes walk-through descriptions of the major functions of a business, explaining the role of each department and the costs that might be incurred.

About the book Use the most current information to prepare students for their field * Emphasis on Global Issues reflect today's increasingly global business environment, including: * The importance of joint cost allocation in creating a trade war between poultry farms in South Africa and the United States (Chapter 16). * The text's examples of management accounting applications in companies are drawn from international settings. * Focus on merchandising and service sectors (versus traditional manufacturing settings)highlight the shifts in the US and world economies, including: * Several Concepts in Action boxes focus on the merchandising and service sectors, including achieving cost leadership at Trader Joes, using activity-based costing to reduce the costs of health care delivery at the Mayo Clinic (Chapter 5), reducing fixed costs at Twitter (Chapter 2), and analyzing operating income performance at Best Buy (Chapter 12) and web-based budgeting at 24 Hour Fitness. * Emphasis on sustainability as one of the critical managerial challenges of the coming decades, including: * Material that stress themes of recognizing and accounting for environmental costs, energy independence and the smart grid, setting stretch targets to motivate greater carbon reductions, using cost analysis, carbon tax, and cap-and-trade auctions to reduce environmental footprints, and constructing "green" homes in a cost-effective manner. * More focus on the role of accounting concepts and systems in fostering and supporting innovation and entrepreneurial activities in firms including: * The challenges posed by recognizing R&D costs as period expenses even though the benefits of innovation accrue in later periods. * How companies budget for innovation expenses and develop measures to monitor success of the innovation efforts delinked from operational performance in the current period (Chapter 6). * The importance of nonfinancial measures when making decisions about innovation (Chapter 11). * The concept that innovation starts with understanding customer needs (Chapter 13). * Process innovations for improving quality (Chapter 19). * Cutting-edge topics are covered, including: * Material around recent trends in big data and data analytics in predicting costs and when making demand forecasts. Provide a solid presentation of accounting hallmarks with a great emphasis on strategy * Strategy maps are presented as a useful tool to implement the balanced scorecard and a simplified presentation of how income statements of companies can be analyzed from the strategic perspective of product differentiation or cost leadership. A new section helps students evaluate strategy maps such as the strength of links, differentiators, focal points and trigger points. * Try It examples are simple and focus on key ideas or concepts. They are located after a particular concept or calculation, and invite students to practice what they have just learned. * Becker Multiple Choice Questions in the assignment material probe students' knowledge of the chapter material and their ability to think critically about key concepts. * Opening Vignettes. Each chapter opens with a vignette on a real company situation. The vignettes get students engaged in a business situation, or dilemma, illustrating why and how the concepts in the chapter are relevant in business. New examples on Quiksilver, General Motors, Boeing, Delta, Honda, and Viacom have been incorporated. * Concepts in Action Boxes. Found in every chapter, these boxes cover real-world cost accounting issues across a variety of industries including automobile racing, defense contracting, entertainment, manufacturing, and retailing. New examples include Subway, Chipotle, H&M, Amazon, Under Armour, and Netflix.

Cost accounting in Anglophone countries is in general less detailed than German cost accounting. Such cross-national differences imply a tension for Anglophone multinationals operating in Germany. These firms have to balance the group-wide application of their home-country traditions and the approval of diverging local cost accounting systems. By the means of a dyadic research design, this study finds empirical evidence for Anglophone cost accounting traditions to prevail in subsidiaries of Anglophone multinationals in Germany. However, the top management teams in these subsidiaries tend to work around such coercive pressures. The findings also suggest that the subsidiaries prefer to deviate from their parent companies' traditions to ensure the usefulness of information for their cost accounting systems.

The purpose of cost and management accounting is to provide managers with information which helps them to control, plan and make decisions. The second edition of this popular book, covers the principles and techniques of this subject area including the basic methods and procedures. It will prove invaluable to students on a wide range of business and professional courses.

Activity-based costing emerged as an important accounting concept in the mid-1980s in response to global competition. There is an urgent need to place it in perspective, so that both production and marketing managers know its advantages and its limitations. This book describes and explains where activity-based concepts fit in the cost and management accounting body of knowledge. It first shows the traditional framework of cost concepts, terminology, and techniques in order to demonstrate how the activity-based methods can bring about constructive changes in financial control systems. The major feature of the book is the three ABC models for manufacturing processes, marketing functions, and service industries. These models are based on the Institute of Management Accounting (IMA)-sponsored case studies of corporate divisions or branches that have already implemented ABC systems. The study was directed by Harvard professors, Cooper and Kaplan, and KPMG Peat Marwick. The book also includes illustrations of the most important cost analysis and control techniques that every successful operating manager must know.

This powerful study guide includes all subjects found in the leading textbooks and parallels the full-year cost accounting courses most schools offer. Also appropriate for solo study, this book makes the complex concepts and techniques accessible through clear explanations and solved problems to provide a review and help students master their skills.

In an era of fierce international competition, manufacturing firms must have a thorough understanding of their cost structure and how that structure relates to pricing and product mix decisions. Two competing conceptual approaches to designing product cost systems that support decision making are Activity-based Costing and the Theory of Constraints. Rather than argue in favor of one to the exclusion of the other, Robert J. Campbell presents a new approach to cost system design that combines the strengths of each school of thought, thereby overcoming the significant limitations of each. The need to price the product mix in order to exploit constrained resources is advocated by the Theory of Constraints, while the need to examine resource consumption from activities, both value adding and non-value adding, to support the principles of JIT is advocated by Activity-based Costing.

After examining the nature of a firM's cost structure as it relates to the activities performed by various functional areas, Campbell discusses the development of activity-based cost systems through an extensive example. Activity-based costing can lead to building excessively complex accounting systems that lack focus and provide confusion about short-run versus long-run changes in the cost structure. After a chapter examining short-run cost behavior and cost relationships, an in-depth discussion of the Theory of Constraints and how it is contrasted to, and complemented by, activity-based costing follows. In these middle chapters the strengths of each methodology are identified and combined into a unified approach to product cost systems. Later chapters provide discussion on pricing strategies, customer profitability analysis, and providing cost measures that recognize either loss of learning or volume-related efficiencies in machine-paced organizations. This book is an important resource for executives or consultants seeking to implement new cost management systems that lead to improved decision making, as well as for educators seeking to reconcile and understand Activity-based Costing and the Theory of Constraints.

Clearly organized and readable, this work is a good introduction to cost accounting for someone with little prior course work or experience in the field. Most chapters include a list of suggested readings. Good index. Most appropriate for community college or public library collections. "Choice"

In response to the expanding roles of accountants in all types of organizations, cost accounting is becoming increasingly multidimensional, relying not only on traditional accounting principles, but also on behavioral, organizational, decisional, and other foundations. These conceptual foundations and their applications to cost accounting practices form the basis of this handbook, which offers both accounting students and professionals a comprehensive review and interpretation of cost accounting techniques and theories. By treating both traditional and newer dimensions of the discipline, the book defines a new scope and boundary that presents cost accounting in a multidimensional framework.

Ahmed Belkaoui presents his material from three different perspectives. First, he shows how the fields of cost accounting, economics, behavioral science, operations research, statistics, and mathematics provide the tools as well as the concepts necessary for the classification, accumulation, and reporting of relevant data for internal decision making and for the interpretation and evaluation of resulting decisions. Second, he demonstrates how standard cost accounting techniques can be complemented by other possible approaches to problems, stressing not only the descriptive but also the normative solutions to cost accounting problems. Finally, he examines how cost accounting techniques affect the planning and control of routine and nonroutine decisions, inventory valuation and income determination. Among the major new developments addressed are variance analysis, learning phenomena in cost estimation, flexible manufacturing systems, and behavioral considerations in cost allocation. This work will be especially valuable for professional accountants and graduate students preparing for an accounting career, and an important resource for academic and public libraries.

.Simpson identifies strategies for cost containment or cost reduction in higher education and discusses these strategies in light of their effect on the quality of the learning experience, the future of the academic profession, and the implications for society. This differs from most of the current literature on cost, which tends only to describe it, explain factors underlying its increase, and how it may be financed.

Particular concern is given to options that could be followed over the long term without impairing the quality of educational opportunities, the academic profession, or society in general. The emphasis is thus on the objectives to be served, rather than the resolution of financial difficulties on the revenue side or on crisis management. Some of the strategies discussed are applicable at particular levels of government; some relate to interinstitutional arrangements; and some are options for individual institutions. This book is recommended for university trustees and administrators, educational administration courses, and government policymakers and concerned faculty.

This book deals comprehensively with the elements of cost accounting, their application to costing methods, and their significance for management through budgetary control, short term decision-making, and capital budgeting. It is an extensive revision of the author's well-known costing text, and provides the student with a complete introduction to cost accounting.

Relevant exercises are included at the end of each chapter, with solutions at the end of the book. These include many from recent examinations of the major professional accountancy bodies. Teachers are thus able to use their own favourite examples in lecture or class, and to refer students to other exercises for further practice. Students who are unable to attend a regular course will be able to check their work against the solutions. A series of multiple choice questions throughout the book provides a further opportunity for the student to check personal progress.

Other features of the book include: a complete introduction to cost accounting; new material on capital budgeting and cost accounting for service activities; an explanation of budgetary control including behavioural aspects; and graded questions and MCQs throughout (definitions follow CIMA terminology).

Business success or failure is often determined by decisions made in establishing selling prices for products and services. . . . In this clear and readable work, the authors present a good summary of the literature on pricing policy, emphasizing the relevance of costs. They propose a system that involves analyzing indirect costs to distinguish those that may be relevant to pricing in some circumstances but not others. This analytical contribution accounting' has promise as a tool for many businesses. Students writing papers on costs and pricing policy would find this volume a useful starting point. The bibliography is good. . . . College and university collections.

Using practical examples and simple language, this book develops an accounting system that is a new and functional key to making product pricing decisions. This accounting system, which bridges the gap between full and direct costing, is called Analytical Contribution Accounting. Georges and McGee demonstrate practically as well as theoretically why it is so superior for pricing purposes. The system is based on the relativity aspects implicit in the direct cost method, and on the calculations of a set of differentiated contributions.

Considers cost and optimization problems from the manufacturer's and the buyer's points of view. The work discusses a variety of warranty policies and the mathematical models for the analysis of related engineering and management issues. All standard consumer product warranties are covered.

This title features full corporation simulation intended for use after coverage of job-order cost accounting, using a JIT inventory system. Its completion time is approximately 10-14 hours. This product is also available with 3.5 disks.

Cost Accounting provides comprehensive coverage of cost accounting principles and techniques in short learning segments that make it easier for students to learn and understand the material. In addition to a clear, concise writing style, carefully planned organization, and numerous illustrations, this new edition now offers an even more attractive design that enhances learning while maintaining student interest. A spreadsheet applications disk can be packaged with the text.

Substantially revised for this edition and packed with additional question and answer material directly linked to each chapter topic, this Student Manual is the ideal learning tool for students who wish to reinforce their understanding of key management and cost accounting principles and to test their problem-solving abilities. This Student Manual is a companion workbook to accompany 'Management and Cost Accounting with CourseMate and eBook Access Card'(ISBN 9781408064313) the international bestseller which has been widely recognised as the definitive textbook on management and cost accounting for over 25 years.