"You may say goodbye to your profit"

2019.04.03.

Judit Fortvingler teaches at the Department of Finance and Accounting and also at the International Business School. She is member and qualified tutor of the Hungarian Chamber of Auditors, certificated internal auditor (Hungarian Association of Internal Auditors) and tax expert (registered by the Ministry for National Economy). She will be the main instructor of Managerial Accounting: information in business decision-making.

How would you explain the idea of Managerial Accounting to a student?

It is about how accounting information can be used for managerial decisions. If you don’t understand what the various costs mean, how they reflect the financial processes of the company, you can’t keep your costs down and may say goodbye to your profit.

Does the course assume then a basic understanding of accounting concepts?

No, it doesn’t. I think we managed to develop a format which caters for the needs both of those who have never studied accounting and those who have some understanding of it. It consists in working with complex, real-life case studies. They aren’t the facile 10-line problem 5-line solution type cases, but take up several pages. Working through the cases gives opportunity not only to teach basic accounting techniques to those who are not familiar with them, but also to discuss complexities which are novel even to those who have taken several courses in accounting.

I imagine the course must be fairly interactive so that it can make sure that everybody gets what he wants.

Absolutely. This format does not work by frontal teaching. In fact, I also found that having students with somewhat different background yields better results in terms of deeper understanding. This is one of the reasons I am very much looking forward to teach a group of international students.