Cost acounting provides data for three major purposes (1) planning and controlling routine operations; (2) nonroutine decisions, policy making, and long-range planning; and (3) inventory valuation and income determination. This book gives abundant consideration to all three of these, but emphasis is placed on the first two. Our major theme of different purposes is continually stressed throughout the book.
The topics emphasiszed from the outset are those that challenge students and spur their curiosity. Because the emphasis is on cost for planning and control, the following topics of prime of managerial significance are introduced early: the role of the accountant in the organization; cost volume- profit relationship; responsibility accounting; standard cost; flexible budget; relevan cost for non routine decisions; determining how cost behave; and cost analysis for control and motivation. The favorable reaction to the format of previous editions is evidence that cost accounting courses can be enriched, relieved of dridgery, and broadened from coverageof procedures alone to a full fledged treatment of concepts, analyses, and procedures that pays more than lip-service to accounting as a managerial tool.