Flexible Budgets, Standard Costs, & Variance Analysis

Managerial & cost accounting tools

The course will introduce managerial accounting topics that will be used throughout the course, contrasting managerial accounting to financial accounting so that we are in the correct mindset as we move forward.

We will discuss flexible budgets, contrasting flexible budgets with static or fixed budgets, demonstrating the benefits of flexible budgets and how they can be used. We will work example problems related to flexible budgets and provide step by step instructional videos to apply the concepts.

The course will define and analyze standard costs and cost variance analysis, giving an overview of cost variance analysis concepts that we will go into more detail on in later sections.

We will explain sales variance analysis, discussing when it can be used, and how to calculate sales variances. We will provide example problems and step by step instructional videos so we can apply what we learn.

The course will cover direct materials variance analysis, showing what it is, how to use it, and how to calculate direct materials variance analysis. We will demonstrate the concepts listed using instructional videos and using example problems along with step by step instructional videos to complete them.

We will discuss direct labor variance analysis, demonstrating what it is, and how direct labor variance analyst is used. We will demonstrate the concepts with instructional videos and provide example problems and step by step instructional videos to complete them.

The course will discuss overhead variance analysis. We will describe why it is used and how to calculate overhead variance analysis. We will provide demonstration presentations and example problems with step by step instructional videos to help complete them.

We will also include a comprehensive problem on overhead variance and a comprehensive problem on variance analysis. The comprehensive problems will provide preformatted Excel worksheets that we can fill out along with step by step instructional videos. The Excel worksheets will generally have two or three tabs, one tab having the completed problem, the second tab having a preformatted Excel worksheet to work through the problem in a step by step format with instructional videos, and the third tab with a blank sheet that we can use to format our own Excel worksheet.