Learn to: Master important cost accounting concepts Apply your skills with real-world examples Score your highest in a cost accounting course Get a grip on cost accounting? Easy. Cost Accounting For Dummies tracks to a typical cost accounting course and provides in-depth explanations and reviews of the essential concepts you'll encounter in your studies: how to define costs as direct materials, direct labor, fixed overhead, variable overhead, or period costs; how to use allocation methodology to assign costs to products and services; how to evaluate the need for capital expenditures; how to design a budget model that forecasts changes in costs based on expected activity levels; and more. Cost Accounting 101 -- find out how cost accounting relates to other areas of accounting, which types of costs are most important, and step-by-step explanations on cost-volume-profit and activity-based costing Plan for it -- take a stroll through the budgeting process, analyze the differences between your budget and actual results using variances, and get the lowdown on overhead costs Make good decisions -- get the scoop on cost drivers -- and how they determine product price -- to make good decisions in running a business Take action -- discover how to allocate costs, analyze business profitability, use shared resources, and more Open the book and find: Cost accounting terms and their purposes How to use cost-volume-profit analysis The hows and whats of activity-based costing Why budgeting is important The concept of relevance in cost accounting Considerations for process costing How to search for measures of quality.