Financial Performance Management Program

As a complement to the CGMA Strategic Management Accounting program, these courses dive deeper into the technical skills needed by financial professionals in business and industry. Before providing the strategic insights, management accountants need to generate the right information that informs those insights. These interactive courses will enable you to acquire or enhance your technical skills in areas from costing methods to financial analysis to advanced forecasting techniques. Upon completion, you will be better prepared to generate and analyze better data-and to move from information to insight in your organization.

As part of the working body of knowledge for CGMAs, this set of CPE courses will be extremely relevant for current, practicing CGMAs, as well as CGMA exam candidates.

Cost Accounting and Management

The Cost Accounting and Management track starts with examining the overall purpose of costing and why it is important for a business to determine the cost of its products or services. It examines modern production environments and how activity-based costing may be more useful than traditional methods of costing (marginal and absorption). It then explores activity-based costing approaches, such as activity-based management, direct product profitability, direct customer profitability and distribution channel profitability. The track includes an in-depth examination of three costing methods - joint product costing, throughput accounting, and environmental costing. It examines the target costing approach and not only includes a background on learning curves, but explores logarithms and contains multiple illustrations. Finally, this course explores the modern business environment for manufacturers including the growth of world class manufacturers, and characteristics of the modern manufacturing environment.

Courses Include:

• Traditional Costing
• Activity-Based Costing
• Activity-Based Management
• Alternative Costing Methods I
• Alternative Costing Methods II
• Quality Management and Process Improvement

Financial Decision Making

The Financial Decision Making track begins with details regarding breakeven analysis, more formally known as Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis, and includes multiple illustrations. This course explores relevant costs and revenues, non-relevant costs, opportunity cost, and incremental revenue. It includes a step-by-step technique which requires the translation of a decision problem into a system of variables, equations and inequalities. The course also explores performance management and potential behavioral consequences. It explores the time value of money and expands on the three main reasons for it - consumption preferences, impact of inflation, and risk. This course deals with the risk of investment appraisal decisions. It also explores alternative strategies for pricing products and services. Additionally, this course looks at how risk and uncertainty can be built into the decision making process. Finally, the course explores what risk is, and why a business would incur risk.

Courses Include:

• Breakeven Analysis
• Relevant Cost and Decision Making
• Linear Programming
• Transfer Pricing
• Investment Appraisal Techniques I
• Investment Appraisal Techniques II
• Pricing Strategy
• Risk and Uncertainty in Decision Making
• Risk Management

Forecasting and Performance Evaluation

The Forecasting and Performance Evaluation track starts with exploring the various financial and non-financial purposes of budgeting. It examines decentralization, and cost, profit and investment centers. This course explores forecasting techniques related to budgeting. It then examines investment centers and performance measures, such as return on investments and includes both advantages and disadvantages. The course includes the shortcomings of financial indicators and, the utility of non-financial performance indicators. Additionally, it explores standard costing and variance analysis. Finally, this course explores the investigation of variances.

Courses Include:

• Planning and Budgeting
• Budgeting Process
• Forecasting Techniques
• Performance Measures
• Variance Analysis I
• Variance Analysis II