Cost Management Accounting: Financial Analysis and Budgeting

This report delves into various aspects of cost management accounting and financial decision-making. It evaluates a capital investment proposal using methods like Net Present Value (NPV), payback period, and Average Annual Rate of Return (ARR), ultimately recommending project acceptance based on positive indicators. The report also considers non-financial factors influencing the acceptance of additional orders, emphasizing political, legal, and competitive considerations, alongside resource availability. Furthermore, it discusses the advantages and disadvantages of marginal costing analysis, highlighting its simplicity and clarity in understanding costs, while also acknowledging its limitations in ignoring fixed costs and oversimplifying cost variability. The analysis extends to the cash conversion cycle, stressing its significance in managing liquidity and operational efficiency, and explores effective methods for accelerating trade receivable collections. Finally, the report contrasts traditional budgeting with advanced methods like activity-based budgeting, critiquing the former's limitations in accuracy, adaptability, and wastage management.

Running Head: Cost Management Accounting
Cost Management Accounting

Cost Management Accounting 1
Question 2
Part 5)
The proposal of acquisition of a new machine i.e. the robotics systems by Terra Nova Plc
requires huge investment of funds amounting £4,150,000. These investments are generally
irreversible in nature therefore requires the critical evaluation using different tools and
techniques of capital budgeting. Since, such an investment is to be made before taking up the
project; the company must evaluate the appropriateness of the project from the financial
viewpoint. There are various techniques of capital investment appraisal under the financial
management studies which can be used to evaluate the project’s risk and return potential.
Such techniques are Net Present value method, Payback method, Average annual accounting
rate of return etc. (Baker and English, 2011)
Net present value method is the most common and easy method of capital investment
appraisal. It determines the present value of net cash flows associated with the project. This
technique helps the project manager to determine the return potential of the project over a
period of time (Bierman Jr and Smidt, 2012). A project with positive NPV is favourable to be
accepted by the firm as it shows that the proposed project has the potential of generating
returns for its stakeholders. In the present case of Terra Nova Plc., the net present value of the
proposed project is positive and hence it indicates that the company must accept the project
as per the NPV technique (Bogsnes, 2016)
Payback period is also a key technique of capital budgeting as it determines the period within
which the project will recover its initial investment. After achieving the payback period
project starts generating returns in the form of cash inflows (Hise and Strawser, 2013). In the
present case the director of the company wants to set the payback period of 2 years but when
the payback technique is applied to the proposed project it has resulted in the payback period

Cost Management Accounting 2
of 3.96 years which is quite higher than the budgeted standard and also it covers the
substantial part of project’s life. It signifies that the project will not be able to recover its
initial costs within a reasonable time. Therefore, the project must not be accepted on the basis
of Payback period.
Average annual rate of return takes into account the account the accounting profits of the
project (Bogsnes, 2016). It is the rate of return of the project. In the present case the director
has set a target of 50% of the ARR of the project. However, the ARR as determined by the
application of ARR method is 87%. Higher ARR indicates higher project’s return and
according to this method the project must be accepted.
Overall recommendation:
As two out of 3 techniques of capital budgeting are showing positive results towards the
acceptance of project, the project must be accepted.
Question 3
Part d)
Before accepting the additional offer, the firm must consider both financial as well as non-
financial factors to determine its feasibility in all the aspects. The non-financial factors that
must be considered in the present case of AstraLens plc can be as follows:
 Political and legal relations with the new client:
As the additional order is placed by the overseas clients, the firm must consider whether it is
legally permissible to maintain business relations with the potential clients. If the firm
requires to hold any licence to deal with such overseas clients as per the regulations of the
government of the country.

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 Competitor’s policies and prices:
Before accepting the additional order, firm must take into account the competitive policies to
achieve the competitive advantage over the rival firms in the market. If the competitors are
also willing to take up the order, the firm must analyse the potential reasons lying behind the
acceptance of overseas offers (Koller, Goedhart and Wessels, 2010).
 Availability of requisite resources:
Before accepting the order, the firm must take into account the considerations regarding the
availability of necessary resources to meet the demand of new customers. If the firm does not
possess requisite resources such as required additional labour, machines, new techniques of
production as required by the new clients etc., it must not accept the new order as it would
lead to mismanagement of existing orders also.
Part e)
Marginal costing analysis is undertaken when the firm wants to analyse the cost and benefits
associated with the activity that is to be taken in addition to the original activities. Firms use
this analysis to undertake informed decision making while accepting an additional order or
activity. It facilitates them to determine the potential profitability of a new unit, order etc. The
additional costs that are ascertained under the marginal costing analysis is known as marginal
costs. Marginal costing analysis has various key advantages to be used by the managers of the
firms. They are discussed below:
Advantages:

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It is a simple approach to understand the variable cost and fixed cost associated with the
product. As marginal costing analysis does not take into account the fixed costs, it gets easier
for the firms to apply this technique.
Moreover, the marginal costing uses contribution as a key tool to undertake effective
managerial decision making. Marginal costing analysis conveys more clearly the effect of
changes in the levels of profits and sales volume. In this way it enables the managers to take
informed decisions. Further, the problems of overhead’s under-absorption or over-absorption
under marginal costing analysis do not occur. Furthermore, marginal cost analysis supports
the firm to take short term decisions in the effective manner. It also provides the entity a
competitive advantage over other firms operating in the same industry as the firms can use it
to determine the profit potential of additional work. Marginal costing analysis also helps the
firm to maximise its productivity and efficiency by utilising its maximum capacity.
Disadvantages:
The major drawback of marginal cost analysis is that it does not take into account the fixed
cost. Fixed cost constitutes major portion of the overall cost and it must be not ignored while
making crucial decisions. It is quite difficult to pre-anticipate the degree of variability of the
costs that are of semi-variable in nature. Under marginal costing analysis, it is assumed that
the fixed cost remains same and does not change over the period of time (Hillier, 2012).
However, in practical word, it does not happen so. Even the fixed cost changes with the
changing time and also marginal costing works on the assumption that the variable cost
change in the proportion of changes in the sales volume. However, in reality this assumption
proves to be unrealistic (Kinney, Raiborn and Poznanski, 2011).

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Question 4
Part a)
Cash Conversion cycle:
Cash Conversion cycle is a metric that couriers the measurement of time, in days, that is
taken by a firm to change the inputs of the resources into cash flows. The cash conversion
cycle tries to evaluate the time every net input dollar is tied up in the procedure of sales and
manufacture before it is transformed into cash by sales to consumers.
Significance of Cash Conversion Cycle:
Studying the cycle of cash conversion for a business is a stimulating technique to measure the
competence of the operations of the company. What it evaluates is how rapidly a business
converts its goods into cash, and fortunately, it is very simple to compute from the available
information. It helps in maintaining the liquidity position of a company by managing its
current assets and current liabilities effectively and efficiently. It helps in determining the
operationally strategy to efficiently manage the inventories, accounts receivables and
accounts payable of the firm (Raheman, et. al., 2010). Such strategies help the firm to manage
its cash flows from the business.
Part b (iv)
A company may allow trade credit to its regular customers. But excessive amount of credit
provision can affect the firm’s operating cycle because of non-availability of the adequate
amount of funds to carry out basic business operations. Therefore, the firm must remain
concerned about converting its trade receivables into cash as soon as possible. There are
various effective ways that can actually help the firm to achieve the objective of collection of
amount owed by the trade debtors. These methods are:

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 Use of accounts receivable software: This can helps the firm to maintain appropriate
records of its receivables. These software provides help to the firm by regularly
reminding the customers from whom the amount is due so that they can make early
payments (Vogel, 2014).
 Negotiation the payment terms: A firm could accelerate its receivables collection by
allowing them various discounting schemes for the early payments ((Madura, 2011).
 Outsourcing the collection work: This can help the company to effectively keep a
track of all its receivables without even indulging in such kind of collection work.
They can hire professionals of the related field for this purpose so that they can make
regular efforts to convert the accounts receivables of the firm into cash. This is done
in return of certain commission or outsourcing fees (Miori and Russo, 2011).
Part c)
Traditional budgeting is one of the common tools of cost management accounting. It is used
to forecast the business of an entity through the use of budgets. Under this type of budgeting,
the budgets statements for the current year are prepared by taking the budgets of the last years
as a basis of estimation of costs and income anticipation.(Vogel, 2014). In the current year,
the budgets are prepared by incorporating changes in the budgets of last year for the
adjustments that are required to be made because of changed situation in the current year.
There occur various activities and events which demand the changes in the budgeted
information and data of the last year such as effect of inflation, changes in the consumer
demands, changed market situation etc. Not only external factors demands changes in the
budgets but also budgeted incomes and costs are changed due to changes that occur in
internal environment such as purchase of new machine that has increased the efficiency of
company, increased number of employees etc. (Réka, Ştefan and Daniel, 2014)

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Traditional budgeting had some limitations that required to be solved and due to this
advanced method of budgeting is introduced under cost management accounting such as
activity based budgeting. The data provided to the managers in not accurate enough to help
the managers to undertake effective decision making (Abdel-Kader, M.G. ed., 2011).
Therefore, traditional budgeting is often criticized because it leads to incorrect decisions for
the business. It is easy for the managers to manipulate the projected results so as to make the
actual results more attractive. Also, there is a little room to incorporate the impact of new and
unexpected events that occurs in between the budgeting period in the budgets that prepared
using the traditional approach. Hence it amounts to provision of out-dated information to the
managers. Also, in the modern world, traditional costing does not prove to be effective as the
traditional budgeting processes fails to sort the wastages into normal and abnormal wastages.
If the organisation cannot understand how much wastage can normally be accepted in
business and what would amount to abnormal wastage, it would not operate appropriately and
the valuable resources would be wasted. Further, it takes considerable time to prepare the
traditional budgets as it requires referring to the previous year budgets. In large organisations,
where there is large amount of data requires to be processed to produce budgets, traditional
budgeting fails to serve the purpose and produces inaccurate and unrealistic results.

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