Principles of Cost Accounting

Discover how readable and relevant cost accounting can be with PRINCIPLES OF COST ACCOUNTING, 17E. This edition packs the essentials you need to know in a unique 10-chapter format that is well organized, practical, and concise. You gain a thorough understanding of cost concepts, cost behavior, and cost accounting techniques as they apply to manufacturing and service businesses. To ensure understanding, the book introduces concepts in small, manageable sections that are immediately reinforced with proven questions, demonstration problems, practice exercises, and self-study quizzes. You master the fundamentals of job order costing and process costing before progressing to more advanced topics, such as budgeting, standard costing and variance analysis, costing for service businesses, and cost analysis for management decisions. Focus on skills that will take you far in today's competitive job market as you learn how to determine the costs of products and services and how to set effective selling prices. Learn techniques to measure the performance of managers and discover how to use accounting to achieve organization's goals. Find the relevant approach you need with the most up-to-date presentation of accounting skills in PRINCIPLES OF COST ACCOUNTING, 17E and corresponding CengageNOW online homework tools.

Edward J. Vanderbeck has been a professor of accounting for 30 years and Chair of the Department of Accountancy at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio, for 22 years. Before retiring in 2008, Professor Vanderbeck specialized in teaching cost accounting to accounting majors and managerial accounting to undergraduate and MBA students. He has taught at the two-year college level at SUNY--Delhi. He has a BA in accounting from SUNY--Binghamton and an MS in business administration from SUNY--Albany. He is licensed as a CPA (inactive) in the state of Ohio. Professor Vanderbeck has worked as an internal revenue agent, and has performed a faculty internship at what was formerly the Big Eight accounting firm of Touche-Ross. He has served as a developmental editor and marketing manager for accounting publications with South-Western. Professor Vanderbeck is an avid tennis player and a student of casino gaming strategies.

Maria R. Mitchell is Associate Professor of Accountancy at Thomas More College in Crestview Hills, Kentucky, where she teaches cost accounting and advanced accounting, to accounting majors and introductory accounting topics to freshman and adult students. Prior to starting her academic career full-time, Ms. Mitchell worked on the audit staff at KPMG and for a global industrial products company, where she was responsible for financial reporting and assisted with activities-based costing implementation projects. She has also been an adjunct instructor at Xavier University and Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. Professor Mitchell is a CPA in the state of Ohio, has an MBA from Xavier University and a BS Accounting from Northern Kentucky University. Outside the classroom, she enjoys the outdoors, reading, gardening, cooking, and studying genealogy.