Week 1 discussion Do you believe a firm must have a firm grasp of the concepts of differential cost, opportunity cost and sunk cost to be effective in makin

Week 1 discussion

Do you believe a firm must have a firm grasp of the concepts of differential cost, opportunity cost and sunk cost to be effective in making business decisions? Please be sure that your first post talks about these three different types of costs. Consider giving examples - especially if you have examples within your own employment experience. Or - you can look for some online resources that offer you some other facets of this topic to discuss so that it isn't just a rehash of the textbook. Don't forget to cite any resources that you use - even the textbook.

Week 2 discussion

What benefits and drawbacks are there for a business that uses a Standard/Traditional Costing model?

What benefits and drawback are there for a business that uses an Activity Based Costing (ABC) model?

If you owned a small manufacturing business with relatively high volume and multiple product lines, would you implement an ABC model? Why?

As you get ready to reflect on these questions, don't forget that the best answers are attempts to apply the concept to a small business and explore how a standard/traditional costing or activity-based costing system would/could be used. What are the benefits and the risks - or how could you adapt it to get the best of both?

Don't forget that, when you draw a blank on a question (or any part of it), take a quick look at the concept on the internet or in the Post online library. There will be some great inspiration there that will help you out AND lend some different perspective on the matter! (Don't forget to cite anything that you use!)

Week 3 discussion

Companies often use leverage to augment profits. Based on what you learned this week, please explain the following in detail:

With regards to Operating Leverage, please explain why a company with HIGH Operating Leverage faces greater financial risk in a declining sales period compared to a company with LOW Operating Leverage. (HINT: The key here is the relation between fixed costs and variable costs.)

What does a business's Contribution Margin represent? What does the Contribution Margin have to do with Operating Leverage?

Week 4 discussion

How important is it to trace costs appropriately? Explain.

As you are beginning to think about the importance of tracing costs appropriately, please consider the differences between variable costing and absorption costing. What implications does each of these have on such things as financial reporting of profit and pricing your products for the marketplace?

You may also want to think about the issues involved with traceable costs as discussed in our text or in articles that you may find online.

Week 5 discussion

Is it important for a company to follow a strict budget even though they may be experiencing phenomenal profits? Do you think that there will be a bias towards greed when creating the budget for this company? Explain.

How does management greed influence budget decisions?

Please consider each of the questions separately in this post. It is important for you to understand the value of the budget as a blueprint for the business â even in times of exceptional âgood newsâ.

It is also important to consider the role of greed within the budgeting process of the firm. Perhaps you might want to think about the budget as a communication to employees about what ownership and management believes is its focus.

You might even want to see if any other of the exceptional âbad boysâ in the business world were reflecting their greed even within their budgeting documents.

Week 6 discussion

Why is the identification of favorable and unfavorable variances so important to a company? How can the identification of the variances help management control costs? Please explain.

As you are considering the flexible budgeting topic of the week, it is important for you to look at this analysis as a significant contribution to the management of the company. Knowing what the bottom line profit or loss is important. But what is more important is to understand how your actual results varied in terms of units sold versus how the actual cost of each unit differed from the budget.

Please do watch the video available in this weekâs resources â you can turn the sound off and read the script on the right side if you need to. The lecturer has an excellent example that will help you.

Do you have an example that you can share? Sometimes thatâs the best way to answer the question.

Week 7 discussion

What insight does ROI give into investment performance? Is it acceptable to lose profit on one product, if that product is vital to the sale of an extremely profitable product? Why?

As you think about these questions, also consider what other measures beside ROI might be help in analyzing solutions to business problems â or opportunities.