Where to find a free course about Management Accounting ?

Free online course Management Accounting

Duration of the online course: 9 hours and 49 minutes

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Master management accounting skills with this free online course—analyze costs, budgets, and decisions with confidence and earn a certificate if available.

In this free course, learn about

Purpose and users of financial vs managerial accounting; core managerial activities
Strategy, planning, directing and control decisions; ethics in managerial accounting work
Compute COGM and COGS; classify direct materials, labor, and manufacturing overhead
Job order vs process costing; journal entries; apply overhead and under/overapplied OH
Predetermined overhead rates and overhead application calculations
Equivalent units in process costing and how they support unit cost assignment
Activity-based costing (ABC): cost drivers, benefits vs traditional costing, adoption limits
Cost behavior patterns; graphing costs; estimate cost formulas via high-low and regression
CVP analysis: break-even, margin of safety, operating leverage, multi-product sales mix
Master budgeting: sales, production, materials, labor, overhead, S&A, cash collections/cash
Variance analysis for materials, labor, variable & fixed overhead; interpret favorable/unfav.
Flexible budgets and why static-budget comparisons can misstate cost control performance
Capital budgeting basics: NPV, payback period, IRR and what each measure indicates
Performance & decisions: balanced scorecard, ROI/residual income, transfer pricing, relevancy

About the free online course

Management accounting turns raw numbers into practical direction. Instead of focusing only on what happened last quarter, it helps you understand why it happened, what will likely happen next, and what you can do about it. In this free online course, you will build the mindset and core techniques used to support planning, control, and decision-making inside real organizations.

You will learn how to interpret the purpose and value of managerial reporting, and how it differs from financial reporting. From there, the course develops the cost foundation needed to explain profitability: how product costs flow through a business, how manufacturing results are summarized, and how key totals connect to performance measures that managers use every day. As you move forward, you will work with common costing approaches so you can choose methods that fit different operational realities, from unique jobs to high-volume processes, and understand why more detailed systems can improve accuracy yet still be challenging to adopt.

To make the numbers useful, you will explore how costs behave as activity changes and how to estimate cost formulas for forecasting and evaluation. You will also connect revenue, volume, and costs to understand break-even points, risk, margin of safety, and the impact of operating leverage. These ideas directly support smarter pricing, sales planning, and product-mix thinking when trade-offs are involved.

Budgeting and performance management are treated as practical tools rather than paperwork. You will see how organizations translate goals into coordinated budgets, anticipate cash needs, and evaluate results with variance analysis and flexible budgeting so performance comparisons remain fair and actionable. Later, the course ties accounting insight to longer-term choices through capital budgeting techniques and performance measurement frameworks such as the balanced scorecard.

Finally, you will strengthen decision skills for situations managers routinely face: setting transfer prices, identifying relevant versus irrelevant costs, and evaluating make-or-buy, keep-or-drop, and constrained resource decisions. Throughout, frequent practice helps you develop confidence and professional fluency that can support roles in accounting, finance, operations, or business analysis.

Course content

Video class: MA1 - Intro to Management Accounting 20m
Exercise: What is the primary difference in the purpose of financial accounting compared to managerial accounting?
Video class: MA2 - Financial vs Managerial Accounting Sample Problem 04m
Exercise: Which of the following activities is most closely associated with managerial accounting?
Video class: MA3 - Strategy, Planning, Directing and Controlling Example Problem 04m
Exercise: In management accounting, which of the following scenarios best exemplifies the control function?
Video class: MA4 - Ethics and Managerial Accounting Sample Problem 11m
Exercise: In the context of a CPA firm, which of the following is considered an ethical issue when completing client files?

Video class: MA5 - Schedule of Cost of Goods Manufactured - Explained 12m
Exercise: Which of the following costs are considered direct costs in management accounting when calculating the cost of a product?
Video class: MA6 - Schedule of Cost of Goods Manufactured Example - Part 1 18m
Exercise: What is the purpose of a schedule of cost of goods manufactured?
Video class: MA7 - Schedule of Cost of Goods Manufactured Example - Part 2 04m
Exercise: What is the basic formula used to calculate the cost of goods sold in management accounting?
Video class: MA8 - Schedule of Cost of Goods Manufactured Example - Part 3 07m
Exercise: Which of the following is subtracted from sales revenue to calculate gross profit on an income statement?

Video class: MA9 - Job Order Costing - Explained 11m
Exercise: What is the primary difference between job order costing and process costing?
Video class: MA10 - Predetermined Overhead Rate - Sample problem - Management Accounting 08m
Exercise: If a company uses a predetermined overhead rate of $15 per direct labor hour, estimated total manufacturing overhead of $300,000, and estimated total direct labor hours of 20,000 hours, what is the correct overhead cost applied to a job that requires 150 direct labor hours?
Video class: MA11 - Job Order Costing - Journal Entries - Sample Problem - Part 1 25m
Exercise: In a job order costing system, which cost is applied to work in process based on a predetermined overhead rate?
Video class: MA12 - Job Order Costing - Journal Entries - Sample problem - Part 2 13m
Exercise: When a company's applied manufacturing overhead is less than the actual overhead incurred, what is the overhead status?
Video class: MA13 - Process Costing Explained - Managerial Accounting 06m
Exercise: In a process costing system, which of the following is true about equivalent units?
Video class: MA14 - Process Costing Sample Problem - Managerial Accounting 20m
Exercise: Which method of costing is best used when products are unique and require individual tracking of costs for each client?

Video class: MA15 - Activity Based Costing - Explained - Managerial Accounting 06m
Exercise: What is the main advantage of using an activity-based costing (ABC) system over a traditional costing system?
Video class: MA16 - Activity Based Costing - Example Problem - Managerial Accounting 18m
Exercise: Which of the following represents a primary reason why many companies may not widely adopt Activity-Based Costing (ABC) despite its potential for providing more accurate cost data?
Video class: MA17 - Cost Behavior - Managerial Accounting 10m
Exercise: What is the primary focus of this module regarding company costs?
Video class: MA18 - Graphing Costs - Sample Problem - Managerial Accounting 08m
Exercise: Which of the following types of costs best describes a scenario where costs increase at a decreased rate after reaching a certain level of activity?
Video class: MA19 - High-Low Method, Scattergraph, Least Squares Regression - Sample Problem Part 1 07m
Exercise: What is the purpose of the Hi-Lo method in cost estimation?
Video class: MA20 - High-Low Method, Scattergraph, Least Squares Regression - Sample Problem Part 2 07m
Exercise: Which method allows for a more precise estimation of a cost formula by using all the available data points and minimizing errors through calculation?
Video class: MA21 - High-Low Method, Scattergraph, Least Squares Regression - Sample Problem Part 3 04m
Exercise: Which of the following methods is used to determine the cost formula that accounts for all data points, minimizing the impact of human error in line drawing?

Video class: MA22 - Breakeven Point and CVP Analysis - Explained 11m
Exercise: Which of the following best describes the concept of the break-even point in cost-volume-profit analysis?
Video class: MA23 - Breakeven Point and CVP Analysis - Sample Problem Part 1 14m
Exercise: What is the margin of safety in percentage terms if budgeted sales are $240,000 and break-even sales are $150,000?
Video class: MA24 - Breakeven Point and CVP Analysis - Sample Problem Part 2 11m
Exercise: What impact does a high degree of operating leverage have on a company's net income in response to fluctuations in sales?
Video class: MA25 - Multi-Product CVP - Sample Problem 17m
Exercise: A company sells three products with variable costs per unit and sales revenue information. Given fixed expenses of $10,000 and a tax rate of 20%, what will be the expected net income if the sales mix remains constant but sales exceed $25,400?

Video class: MA26 - Budgets 05m
Video class: MA27 - Schedule of Expected Cash Collections - Sample Problem 12m
Exercise: In management accounting, what is one of the primary purposes of preparing a sales budget?
Video class: MA28 - Production Budget - Sample Problem 09m
Exercise: Why is it important for a company to prepare a production budget?
Video class: MA29 - Materials Purchases Budget - Sample Problem 14m
Exercise: When preparing a production budget, what is the logical process you should follow?
Video class: MA30 - Direct Labour Budget - Sample Problem 13m
Exercise: Assuming a company needs to produce 15,000 units and each unit requires three direct labor hours, what would be the total direct labor cost if workers are paid $20 per hour?
Video class: MA31 - Manufacturing Overhead Budget - Sample Problem 06m
Exercise: When preparing an overhead budget, what is a critical reason for distinguishing between cash expenses and non-cash expenses like depreciation?
Video class: MA32 - Selling and Administrative Expenses Budget - Sample Problem 11m
Exercise: What is a key reason why depreciation is often excluded from cash disbursements in management accounting budgets?
Video class: MA33 - Cash Budget - Sample Problem 10m
Exercise: Which of the following is the main purpose of preparing a cash budget?

Video class: MA34 - Variance Analysis - Explained 11m
Exercise: In variance analysis within management accounting, what is a primary cause of an unfavorable direct materials quantity variance?
Video class: MA35 - Direct Materials Price and Quantity Variances - Sample Problems 06m
Exercise: In the context of direct materials variance analysis, what does a 'favorable variance' indicate?
Video class: MA36 - Direct Labor Rate and Efficiency Variances 05m
Exercise: A company analyzed its labor costs and found that its actual hours worked exceeded the standard hours required. If the company experienced an unfavorable labor efficiency variance, what does this indicate?
Video class: MA37 - Variable Overhead Variances - Sample problem 05m
Exercise: A company applies its variable overhead costs based on machine hours. If the company's predetermined variable overhead rate is $6 per machine hour and it produced 600 widgets in January using 320 machine hours, what would be the actual variable overhead cost per machine hour if the total variable overhead cost was $1400?
Video class: MA38 - Fixed Overhead Variances - Sample Problem 07m
Exercise: In Management Accounting, why is the fixed overhead volume variance considered favorable when actual production exceeds planned production?
Video class: MA39 - Comprehensive Variance Analysis Sample Problem 15m
Exercise: When evaluating a new supplier for chemical materials, a company found favorable variances in both price and quantity. What might this indicate about the materials provided by the new supplier?

Video class: MA40 - Flexible Budgets Explained 07m
Video class: MA41 - Flexible Budgets - Sample Problem 09m
Exercise: What is the main flaw in reporting cost controls without using a flexible budget?
Video class: MA42 - Capital Budgeting - Net Present Value - Explained 18m
Exercise: What does the Payback Period indicate in capital budgeting analysis?
Video class: MA43 - Net Present Value, Payback Period, and IRR Sample Problem 14m
Exercise: What is the main purpose of calculating the payback period in capital budgeting?
Video class: MA44 - The Balanced Scorecard - Explained 08m
Exercise: In the context of performance measurement, what is the primary difference between lagging and leading indicators?
Video class: MA45 Calculating ROI and Residual Income - Sample Problem 11m
Exercise: In the context of managerial performance evaluation, which measure takes into account both operating income and the company's required rate of return on its assets?
Video class: MA46 - Balanced Scorecard Sample Problem 02m
Exercise: What perspective of the balanced scorecard is associated with the goal of reducing setup time by 20%?

Video class: MA47 - Transfer Pricing - Explained 20m
Exercise: In the context of transfer pricing within a company that operates multiple divisions, such as a parent company and its subsidiaries, what is typically a consideration when determining the price one division will charge another for goods or services?
Video class: MA48 - Transfer Pricing - Sample Problem 27m
Exercise: In a decentralized organization facing a transfer pricing dilemma, what is the primary concern for a division manager?
Video class: MA49 - Relevant Costs for Decision Making 05m
Exercise: In the context of management accounting, which of the following costs would be considered irrelevant when making a future business decision?
Video class: MA50 - Make or Buy Decision - Sample Problem 11m
Exercise: Carol's Cupcakes is evaluating whether to accept a supplier's offer for icing or continue making it in-house. Given the following costs, what is the net disadvantage of accepting the supplier's offer if 5000 liters of icing are required?
Video class: MA51 - Drop or Retain a Segment - Sample Problem 11m
Exercise: A company is considering dropping a segment of their business that is currently underperforming. If the segment is dropped, sales from the other departments are expected to decrease by 10%, while $20,000 in fixed costs will remain. Assuming the underperforming segment currently loses $30,000, what is the net dollar effect of dropping the segment?
Video class: MA52 - Constrained Resource Decision - Sample Problem 07m
Exercise: In a constrained resource environment, how should a company prioritize product production?
Video class: MA53 - Relevant Cost Analysis Doesn't ALWAYS Work Well 09m
Exercise: Why might relevant cost analysis sometimes lead to poor business decisions?