8 top study articles on Management Accounting: Budgeting

We’re here to help with 8 essential articles on the Management Accounting: Budgeting unit.

1. Budgeting – Compiling the material elements

In this article, our AAT tutor looks at the material element of an operating budget, running us through an example scenario with you as the budget accountant. We cover the process of creating a draft operating budget.

2. Labour, overheads and operating budget

Once you have the material elements of a budget nailed down, it’s time to look at labour and overheads. In this article, we look at adding these elements into a draft production budget, after establishing current labour costs and overheads.

3. Production budget report

Once you’ve created a budget report, as a budget accountant it will be your responsibility to communicate this budget to a budgetary committee for approval. The written element of this task is key to your synoptic assessments, so take your time with this one.

4. Limiting factors – Using standard costing to plan for production restraints

Standard costing is often used to calculate the expected cost of products. In this article, we look at how it differs from general budgeting, and focus in on how standard costing can be used to help plan production when resources are limited.

5. Budgeting using standard costing – labour variance analysis

Our AAT tutor dives into standard costing and how labour variances can be analysed to determine how the actual costs differ from the expected cost that was budgeted.

6. Budgeting using standard costing – material variance analysis

In this article, we look at the raw material cost statement, and see how material’s price and usage variances are used to monitor actual costs against those budgeted.

7. What’s the difference between marginal and absorption costing?

Marginal and absorption costing are covered in various forms at all levels of the AAT Accounting qualification, but they’re often misunderstood by students. Firm up your knowledge with our deep dive into the tangible differences.

8. What actually is standard costing?

Back to basics with standard costing in our final article, as our tutor looks at how standard costing is used in organisations, and the differences with general budget setting.

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