Amazon.com description: Product Description: Studying cost accounting is one of the best business decisions a student can make. Why? Because success in any business -- from the smallest corner store to the largest multinational corporation -- requires the use of cost accounting principles and practices. Cost accounting provides key data to managers for planning and controlling, as well as for costing products, services, and customers. Today especially, as more and more cost accountants are being called on to become decision makers instead of data providers, our theme of "different costs for different purposes" which we stress throughout the book, is essential for a thorough and useful accounting education. By focusing on basic concepts, analyses, uses and procedures instead of procedures alone, we recognize cost accounting as a managerial tool for business strategy and implementation, and we also prepare students for the rewards and challenges facing them in the world of professional cost accounting both today and tomorrow.