The Cost Management Toolbox: A Manager's Guide to Controlling Costs and Boosting Profits

I really enjoyed reading this book. By far, it is one of the best I've read in the field of cost accounting. Lianabel does a great job explaining the concepts and bringing them to life with examples. By the way, if you're interested in ABC/ABM, Tom Pryor's book called "Using ABM for Continuous Improvement" is also a great book with lots of examples.

Lianabel Oliver's book is an excellent simple book for managers and yes the general public! This book has helped understand the budgets the Administrator prepares in our office very year in terms of the importance of allocating effort and money to the continuously changing needs and demands of our work. It has also helped in formulating the right questions when I read the audit reports, budget projections, and income balance statements as a member of several board of directors.Practical questions are introduced in each chapter and the analyses tools to deal with them are provided in both a simple and a more complex manner. The complex concepts are extremely well explained. Someone like myself, with no formal financial background could understand the concepts and reason through the chapters. One of the most amazing aspects of the book is that it draws on the very vast experience of the author with concrete examples that illustrate the points she is making and shows the various paths that one might take --the good and the bad. Showing the bad choices one can make and how to solve the problems this creates is seldom found in professional literature.This book should be required reading for business people in general but most importantly for those businesses that deal directly with costumers. For example, chapter 8 will show both how to effectively measure the financial performance of these people-related businesses and how to improve the quality of service (cost management).

"The Cost Management Toolbox" is an excellent reference book, being a very useful and practical tool for accounting and non-accounting professionals. I use it very often for day to day managerial accounting situations in which the concepts presented by an experienced professional as Lianabel Oliver are very helpful. It is very easy to understand, and its examples are clear and concise.

I find this book terrific, as my current work involve costing and I don't have any accounting background. It tells me the very logical way to know the how the cost really count-on. I do recommend it to any person who want to know costing more deeply.