Take My Liberty BUSI 601 Class

BUSI 601 treats cost information as a weapon in strategy rather than a record of the past. Blocher and Hicks open with that idea, contrasting firms that compete on low cost with firms that compete on something customers will pay more for.

The early chapters introduce the balanced scorecard, strategy maps and critical success factors, the tools that tie a firm's measures to what it is trying to achieve.

Week two adds cost behavior and the basics of cost management, and week three turns to activity-based costing and the quality chapters that ask what poor quality really costs.

Week four covers cost-volume-profit analysis and the planning decisions it supports, from break-even to the effect of a price change.

The middle and later weeks cover target costing and life-cycle costing, budgeting, and the use of relevant costs in short-term decisions such as whether to make or buy.

Week seven reaches strategic performance measurement, and the course closes with management control and an integrating review.

Three exams punctuate the term, in the third, fifth and eighth weeks.

Each module pairs the reading with a Liberty study guide that walks through the chapter's problems.

Quality costs get a chapter of their own, splitting spending into prevention, appraisal and the internal and external costs of failure.

Target costing and life-cycle costing return in week six, asking how a product's price and full lifetime costs should shape its design.

BUSI 601 is built around one organization that carries both projects, so it is chosen in the first days: a public company with clear financial information and a strategy you can name.

Forum threads run 200 to 400 words, reference the textbook and scholarly journals, and pass through SafeAssign as well as the board. A thread on how cost information supports strategy might contrast a discount retailer's cost leadership with a premium brand's differentiation.

Replies in the following week run 200 to 350 words and add a source and a point of their own.

Project one holds the company's costs and scorecard up against the strategy it claims, and reports where they line up and where they clash.

Project two takes one modern costing method and works out what it would change in that same company's decisions.

You sit the exams; the projects double as revision.

You post and submit each item yourself.

Each project cites scholarly research on the tools it uses, alongside the company's own filings.

Forum threads are kept within their word limits, since a 400-word ceiling means every sentence must count.

BUSI 601 goes to a management accountant, usually a CMA or a CPA who has worked as a controller, cost analyst or financial planning manager.

That background matters because the projects ask how cost systems support strategy, and someone who has redesigned a costing system knows where they fail.

They know Blocher and Hicks's strategic tools well, from the balanced scorecard to target costing.

They read the management accounting journals, which makes the forums' scholarly sources easy to supply.

A second reviewer checks each project before release. One writer stays with your course, so both projects describe the same company consistently.

Your details stay private. If a chapter is unclear before an exam, such as how to compute an activity rate, a short worked example can be sent.

Several have taught managerial accounting, so their explanations of activity rates or contribution margins are clear.

They know which cost clues hide in an annual report when a company does not publish its internal costs.

Many have worked in companies that use the balanced scorecard, so the projects describe it as it works in practice.

Choosing the organization is the first difficulty. A company with vague strategy or little public cost information makes both projects thin.

The first project is the second, because evaluating strategy means connecting numbers to choices, not just describing the company.

The second project is the third, since applying a technique to a real company requires estimating how its decisions would change, which public information only partly supports.

The forums are short but strict, with SafeAssign checks and scholarly journal sources required even at 200 words.

The exams are the fifth difficulty, especially the quantitative chapters on cost behavior, CVP and activity-based costing.

Week four holds the first project, worth 200 points, right after the first exam.

Strategy language is a hurdle for accounting students, and accounting numbers are a hurdle for strategy students; the projects need both.

The exams also include short scenario questions that ask which tool fits a situation, so the reading matters.

Picking a technique for the second project that does not fit the company, such as lean accounting for a software firm, weakens the paper.

Booking before the course opens lets the organization be chosen and the first forum thread go up early in week one.

The two forums open in weeks one and five; each reply follows a week later.

The first project arrives before week four closes, and the second before week seven closes.

The two projects make up most of the cost, with the forums smaller. Joining late is quoted from the next item due.

Each item is an editable file, and the projects come with a one-page summary of their figures.

Forum orders cover the thread and reply as one line.

Booking both projects at once lowers each, since the company research is shared.