This text emphasizes decision making and analysis, breaking with the more traditional debits-and-credits approach that requires students to determine the financial status of a company by performing numerous calculations before they can begin to interpret data. Recognizing that most students taking a principles of managerial accounting course are not accounting majors, the new edition limits calculations and procedural detail by focusing on the business relevance of accounting in decision making.
The new edition is flexible enough to support both instructors who emphasize uses of accounting information and instructors who focus on the procedural aspects of accounting. By placing the procedural content in optional, supplemental objectives at the end of chapters, instructors can choose how much procedural detail to include in their course. Comprehensive assignment material is also organized by learning objective, enabling faculty to customize the homework assignments based on course objectives.
- New co-author Susan Crosson, coordinator of the accounting department at Santa Fe Community College and chair of the Two-Year College Section of the American Accounting Association, enhances the text with her expertise in managerial accounting and instructional technology.
- Two new managerial videos focus on the financial information and management issues of real companies. A one-page case is tied to the video and appears at the beginning of the appropriate text chapter.
- Blackboard Course Cartridges and WebCT e-Packs deliver course content over the Internet and can be used in a traditional classroom setting or as a complete distance learning solution. Customized coursematerials include reviews, quizzes, activities, solutions, PowerPoint slides, and more.
- Going the Distance in Accounting, an interactive web-based workshop, allows faculty to design and deliver online accounting courses.
- Business Focus boxes emphasize business strategy as it relates to the key themes of ethics, practice, technology, and international issues. Each box provides insights into real companies, including start-ups and e-commerce businesses.
- Decision Points, based on excerpts from annual reports and articles from business journals, promote critical thinking and decision making by presenting students with a situation that requires them to make a decision using accounting information. Decision Points in the financial chapters are presented from A User's Focus while the Decision Points in the managerial chapters provide A Manager's Focus.
- An annotated Chapter 1 helps students understand the purpose and value of the book's pedagogical framework and how to use it to their advantage.
