Cost Accounting with Integrated Data Analytics, 2nd Edition
By Karen Congo Farmer and Amy J. Fredin
The authors of Cost Accounting with Integrated Data Analytics understand that in order to effectively teach students, you need to reach them first. Through conversational storytelling, interactive assessments, and applications grounded in modern business scenarios, this text actively engages students, helping them develop a deeper understanding of cost accounting fundamentals and the decision-making skills they will take with them into their future careers.
With WileyPLUS for Cost Accounting, students are supported at every step of their learning journey. An Adaptive Managerial Accounting refresher is available to help students recall foundational content before moving onto more advanced topics. Throughout the course, student learning is scaffolded through bite-sized lessons, practice and reflection at the point of learning, and relatable, scenario-based assignments designed to reinforce understanding and connect key concepts.
Throughout Cost Accounting and WileyPLUS, students will have the opportunity to work through a variety of data analysis applications as well, including Tableau Data Visualization problems and Integrated Excel cases. With a variety of assignments that leverage market-leading technologies, students gain experience making informed business decisions while thinking critically about data.
Written for students and with the student perspective in mind, this text supports long-term concept retention and builds a strong foundation for success both in and beyond the classroom.
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Highlighting the relevance of Cost Accounting to engage students
Storytelling Videos feature co-author Karen Farmer sharing bite-sized stories to help students connect what they’re learning in each chapter to the real world. These mini stories are designed to engage students and help them make meaning from cost accounting concepts and application, while also helping instructors discover new ways to teach costing procedures.
Uniquely fun, scenario-based end-of-chapter problems and cases allow students to practice applying key concepts and making business decisions within contexts that are relatable and relevant to them.
Why This Matters in the Real World sections at the end of each learning objective reinforce the classroom career connection, helping students see how core concepts apply to actual business scenarios.
Supporting student understanding and long-term retention
Solution Walkthrough Videos guide students through multi-learning objective problems to help consolidate understanding and provide 24/7 homework assistance for nearly a hundred exercises, brief exercises, homework questions, and problems.
Adaptive Assignments help close potential knowledge gaps through practice, just-in-time instruction, and remediation to prerequisite topics for struggling students. An Adaptive Chapter 0: Managerial Accounting Refresher is available as a review of foundational topics to help ensure students feel confident and prepared.
Let’s Walk Through It scaffolded examples show students how to apply Cost Accounting concepts to solve questions, while Now You Do It interactive problems provide practice at the point of learning to reinforce understanding.
Building critical Data Analysis skills
Data Analysis Technology Bootcamps help students develop foundational data analytics software skills in Excel, Power BI, Alteryx, SQL, and Tableau. Each bootcamp features video walkthroughs, auto-graded knowledge check questions, and application problems with video solutions.
Integrated Excel Cases allow students to apply cost accounting topics to realistic business scenarios through Organic Footwear, a running case featured throughout the course. The Excel cases include How-To Videos to provide just-in-time instruction, as well as case assignments and questions for students to apply what they’re learning to various business scenarios.
What’s new in the text:
- New coverage on The Cost of the Customer.
- New references to ESG and Sustainability have been added throughout the text along with a specific icon for identification.
- Updated examples, illustrations, integrated practice questions, and features for currency and relevancy.
- New and updated end-of-chapter questions with a focus on enhancing problem material depth and variety.
What’s new in WileyPLUS:
- New and updated end of chapter questions with a focus on enhancing problem material depth and variety.
- New Solution Walkthrough Videos provide study support by breaking down complex questions and building students’ problem-solving skills.
- New Gradable Excel assignments for every chapter help students build their Excel skills within an accounting context. Each problem is auto-graded and provides cell-level feedback for enhanced understanding.
- New Data Analytics questions utilizing Excel help students further expand their data analysis skills.
- New Tableau Data Visualization assignments ask students to interpret and analyze visualizations in Tableau Reader.
Karen Congo Farmer, MA, CPA, CA (CANADA). Raised on a farm in southwestern Ontario, Canada, I learned from an early age the value of hospitality, music, seasons, finishing a job, and telling a good story.
McMaster University introduced me to a professor who inspired a love of accounting. She was authentic and warm—a role model for my future teaching. As an auditor at Ernst & Young, I earned my CPA designation and experienced business and networking first-hand. Next, I held a dual role at the beautiful Western University: Accountant by day in Financial Services, and accounting lecturer in the evening. Soon enough, I became a full-time lecturer. In addition, a 10+ year instructor role with CPA Ontario, preparing students for their professional exams, was pivotal to my development.
And then I found myself in Texas. Another dual role beckoned: Controller of a financial advisory firm and senior lecturer at Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. The Aggie experience was always in my genes. As a professor, I teach Cost Management and Analysis as a flipped class and in the hybrid format to every student in our accounting program. I also teach Ethical Decision-Making and Conduct and Financial Statement Analysis in masters programs, and create and deliver executive education programs for Fortune 500 companies and local firms. For accomplishments in teaching effectiveness, innovation, curriculum development, and student service, I am honored to have received Texas A&M’s prestigious and highly-competitive university level Provost Academic Professional Track Teaching Excellence Award in 2022, and the Baggett-Snoots Teaching Award in both 2013 and 2018.
Call it coincidence or serendipity: An early love of writing and storytelling led to this very book. It could never have come about without the richness and diversity of my experiences. This text is a mosaic of everything that has come before it.
As a mom, daughter, sister, cousin, professor, and friend, I love learning, gardening, travel, laughter, my delightful son, Austin, furry, sweet Maple and Finley. This book is authentically me, so you’ll see glimpses of those themes throughout.
Amy J. Fredin, PHD, CPA, CIA. My story begins in a small town in western Minnesota, where I grew up with music and sports, camping and boating, family time and fierce friendships. I studied music and accounting at the College of St. Benedict and from there worked in public accounting and obtained my CPA. I then went back to school for my MBA at St. Cloud State University. While completing that degree, I started teaching in the accounting program at Alexandria Technical College. It was there that my love for teaching began.
Five years later, my story moves to Nebraska, where I pursued a PhD in accounting at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln (go Big Red!). After I completed that degree, St. Cloud State invited me back, this time to join the Accounting Department as a faculty member. In my more than seventeen years at SCSU, I have enjoyed teaching, researching, working with students and colleagues, leading case discussions in executive training programs, and connecting with employers in the community.
My primary teaching responsibilities lie in Cost Accounting, as well as Introductory Managerial Accounting, Internal Audit, and Accounting for Managers in our MBA program. I have been able to work with corporate clients as well, through the Center of Continuing Studies at SCSU and in partnership with the Anderson Center, a local management and leadership development entity. My research interests include case teaching in the cost accounting area, the balanced scorecard, internal audit, and whistleblowing. I have published articles in a variety of outlets, including practitioner and academic journals such as Strategic Finance, IMA Educational Case Journal, New Accountant, and Ethics & Behavior. In all these experiences, I’ve been fortunate to live and work alongside smart, kind, innovative people who have helped me gain independence, confidence in my abilities, and the courage to find my voice.
A special shout-out to my husband and kids, who are amazing companions along this journey of life. I’m grateful for the straight roads and the winding, bumpy paths that comprise my story thus far because they’ve led me here. I’ve drawn from all these experiences in writing this book, and I’ve gained new experiences in the process too. Yes, I’m still learning! And I’m excited to see what’s in store when I turn the next page.
0. A Refresher of Managerial Accounting *Online only
1. Cost Accounting Has a Purpose
2. Refresher on Cost Terms
3. Cost Behavior and Cost Estimation
4. Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis
5. Relevant Costs for the Decision-Maker
6. Mastering the Master Budget
7. Capital Budgeting Choices and Decisions
8. Job Costing Visualized
9. Activity-Based Costing
10. Variance Analysis and Standard Costing
11. Process Costing
12. Absorption Versus Variable Costing
13. Data Analytics
14. Support Department Costing
15. Joint Costs and Decision-Making
16. The Art and Science of Pricing to Optimize Revenue
17. Management Control Systems, Responsibility Centers, and Transfer Pricing
18. Business Strategy, Performance Measurement, and the Balanced Scorecard