What the CMA Is, and What This Course Is Not

The Certified Management Accountant (CMA) is the professional certification of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), a professional body for accountants and finance professionals who work inside organizations. A management accountant does not mainly prepare accounts for outsiders. They help managers plan, decide, control costs and measure performance. The CMA is designed to show that a person can do this work to a professional standard.

The CMA exam has two parts. Each is a separate exam, and IMA has allowed candidates to take them in either order; check the current rules with IMA:

• Part 1: Financial Planning, Performance, and Analytics — external financial reporting decisions, planning and budgeting, performance management, cost management, internal controls, and technology and analytics. This course covers Part 1.
• Part 2: Strategic Financial Management — financial statement analysis, corporate finance, decision analysis, risk management, investment decisions and professional ethics. That part is covered by the course IMA CMA Part 2 Exam Preparation, which follows this one.

Who this course is for

This is an advanced course. It assumes you already know basic bookkeeping: debits and credits, the three main financial statements and what a budget is. If those ideas are new, start with the courses Financial Statements Explained, Management Accounting and Costing and Budgeting and Forecasting, then come back. Here, every topic is taught at exam depth: you will calculate, compare rules, judge which method fits a case and explain your answer, because that is what the exam asks.

The course follows IMA's published content specification outline for Part 1 and its learning outcome statements, written in our own words. IMA publishes these documents free of charge. Download the current version from IMA and keep it beside you: it is the official list of what can be tested.