The IMA salary survey provides more specificity on the value of a master's degree and certifications in accounting. See my note for some graphics that promote both.
Schiffel, L., K. A. Smith and D. L. Schroeder. 2011. IMA 2010 salary survey: How's that recovery workin' for you? Strategic Finance (June): 26-46.
http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumSalarySurvey2011.htm
Comments
My opinion: If you have an active CMA, there is nothing wrong with placing it after your name. So there appears to be something else going on in the way you define your business on your web site that the Texas board thinks makes it appear that you are offering public accounting services as a CPA. Perhaps you could change the wording and put your credentials back after your name. It looks like they are saying that you are implying that the CMA and enrolled agent credentials give you the legal right to do things that only a CPA can do. I think you should make it clear on your web site exactly which services you offer and what you do not offer. I would not give up so easily.
Is grad school worth the investment?
The theme of Pappano's article (my previous post) is that those with master's degrees are more competitive in the marketplace. Simon's supports the value of a graduate degree from a somewhat different perspective, i.e., that the return on investment for a graduate degree in many fields is worth the time, money, and effort required.
Simon, C. C. 2011. ROI: Is grad school worth the investment? New York Times Education Life (July 24): 18-19.
You might find the following article to be useful.
Carter, T. L., A. M. Sedaghat and T. D. Williams. 1998. How ABC changed the post office. Management Accounting (February): 28-32, 35-36. (Summary).
Coopers & Lybrand developed cost models for cash, check, credit card and debit card processing for the post office.
MAAW's section on cash and credit might yield some additional articles related to credit cards etc. See Cash and Credit Related.
Goldratt's books do not include an index, so it's hard to find where he addresses the pricing issue. However, the following book by Cox includes an extensive index related to the many TOC issues.
Cox, J. 2010. Theory of Constraints Handbook. McGraw-Hill Professional. The link is to Amazon where you can view the table of contents and the index. Scanning through what Amazon makes available I did not find much on pricing but you might want to take a look.
Another book related to TOC has pricing in the title, but I don't know how much information they include on pricing. Eden, Y. and B. Roaz. 2007. Approximately Right, Not Precisely Wrong: Cost Accounting, Pricing & Decision Making. North River Press.
Another area you might want to consider is the pricing issues related to direct costing and the contribution margin approach. That controversy has been around a long time and it is closely related to pricing in TOC. See MAAW's section on Contribution Margin for more. There is also a MAAW section on Pricing Decisions, but I don't think there is much in there about TOC.
We summarized a lot of material related to the theory of constraints in MAAW's TOC section. Perhaps there is some information about pricing in that material somewhere.
In the TOC problems that we considered the emphasis is on promoting a pull system, and determining product mix. The prices in these simple problems are always given. So it seems pricing is based on the market, not throughput costing. I am sure Goldratt addressed the pricing problem, but off hand I don't remember where to find that information in his many articles and books. If I find it, I'll post it below.
James R. Martin
http://maaw.info
I developed a new section on MAAW I refer to as Managing Yourself. You might find some of the summaries in this section useful in planning and managing your career.
Drucker, P. F. 2005. Managing oneself. Harvard Business Review (January): 100-109. (Summary).
Kaplan, R. S. 2007. Managing yourself: Reaching your potential. Harvard Business Review (July-August): 45-49. (Summary).
Roberts, L. M., et. al. 2005. How to play to your strengths. Harvard Business Review (January): 74-80. (Summary).
Wademan, D. 2005. The best advice I ever got. Harvard Business Review (January): 35-44. (Summary).
As Paula indicates above, there are a lot of opportunities in accounting other than public accounting. Public accounting is a revolving door for many who start their careers as entry level auditors. Many companies provide accounting training programs designed to emphasize their specific accounting systems. For example, General Electric has a program they refer to as the Financial Management Program. A program like GE's is a nice alternative to public accounting.
I think a career advice section is a good idea for the IMA linkup.
There are a fairly large number of dashboards available on the web. Here's one based on Excel.
http://www.idashboards.com/Pages/Excel-Dashboards.aspx?gclid=CLf_-M69mKQCFYbD7QodljazEQ
There are two sections on the MAAW web site you might find useful. Service industry accounting and Accounting for...
I place any article or book I find on the service industry in one or both of those sections. The Accounting for.. bibliography contains articles about a specific type of accounting or business.
These sections are part of a much larger web site related to management and accounting. http://maaw.info
James R. Martin
The answer is b. 600,000
1,000 units at 4.30 = 4,300 cost of order
4,300 - DM 1,000 and DL 1,500 = 1,800 overhead applied
Let X = the overhead rate per machine hour
450 X = 1,800
X = 4 overhead rate per machine hour
($4)(150,000 budgeted MH) = $600,000