CAT T4

CAT T4-Accounting for Costs is one of the intermediate level papers of CAT,which is the paper that give you knowledge about management accounting and most of the knowledge from this paper is going to be brought forward to CAT T7-Planning,control and performance management,therefore it is important to truely understand what is learnt in this paper.

This paper builds up the knowledge from CAT T2-Information for management control,but there are a very huge difference between CAT T2 and T4.In CAT T2,you will learn about IT and a little of costing concepts only,but in CAT T4,it was expanded widely,IT is not important in T4,T4 builds up the costing concepts and plus more costing techniques to learn.Therefore you may find that there are a lot to learn from this paper,but actually nothing is difficult,what you need is to have open-mind always to learn new things.

The aim of this paper is to develop knowledge and understanding of how organisations record,analyse and report current and future costs and revenue data for use within the organisation.As you can see,examiner stated that all areas of the syllabus are equally important,it means that the knowledge that is provided by this paper can help you a lot in future,so it is essential not to skip any topics.

In this paper,you will find that the material chapter learnt in T2 are way too easy compare to the one in T4.In T4,you will learn even more like how to value the inventory and what amount of inventory to order so that you will minimise holding cost and ordering cost.Labour chapter does not differ much,almost the same.In the overhead chapter of T4,you need to be able to do the 3 steps of overhead absorption costing and also determine the over or under absorption.

Remember to understand the absorption and marginal costing well because in T7,you must do well for it.In T4,you also get to learn about the T account for costs for intergrated accounting system and interlocking accounting system.You will also learn job costing,batch costing and service costing to calculate costs respectively.Next is process costing which is a big area of the syllabus,you have a lot of things to learn from this topics,be prepare.

Beside these costing techniques,you will also learn CVP analysis which will be brought forward to T10 later.You will also learn short-term decision-making which you need to determine the relevant costs to charge the customers,this is called relevant costing.Limiting factor and make-or-buy decision can be learnt in decision-making topic too.Finally you have a chance to learn how to appraise a capital investment,this is a long-term decision and will also be brought forward to T10.

Therefore,you can see that whatever things that are included in T4 are very important,you should value this paper and study well of it.This paper is to give students knowledge about management accounting but it is not an application paper yet,therefore if you study the books enough,you can pass easily.Try to score well for this paper,the better you are for this paper,the easier for you in CAT T7 and T10.Good luck :)