CMA Entrance Exam Curriculum by Parts and Topics

CMA Exam Part 1

• External financial reporting (15%)
• Planning, budgeting, and forecasting (30%)
• Performance management (20%)
• Cost management (20%)
• Internal controls (15%)

CMA Exam Part 2

• Financial statement analysis (25%)
• Corporate finance (20%)
• Decision analysis (20%)
• Risk management (10%)
• Investment decisions (15%)
• Professional ethics (10%)

More Information On Each Topic

CMA Exam Part 1

External Financial Reporting Decision

• New to the CMA exam covering basis of financial accounting.
• Preparation of financial statements.
• Valuation of assets and liabilities.
• Operating and capital leases.
• Impact of equity transactions.
• Revenue recognition; income measurement; major differences between U.S. GAAP and IFRS.

Planning, budgeting, and forecasting

• How to annual profit plans and supporting schedules.
• Different types of budget e.g. activity-based budgeting, project budgeting and flexible budgeting.
• Top-level planning and analysis.
• Forecasting including quantitative methods e.g. regression analysis and learning curves.

Performance Management

• How to analyze the finance statement items such as revenue, cost, profit and investment in assets.
• Variance analysis based on flexible budgets and standard costs.
• Responsibility accounting for revenue, cost, contribution and profit centers.
• Balanced scorecards

 Cost Management

• Cost concepts, flows and terminology.
• Alternative cost objectives.
• Cost measurement concepts.
• Cost accumulation system e.g. job order costing, process costing, activity-based costing.
• Overhead cost allocation.
• Operational efficiency and business process performance topics e.g. JIT, MRP, theory of constraints, value chain analysis, benchmarking, ABM and continuous improvement.

Internal Control

• Risk assessment
• Internal control environment, procedures and standards.
• Responsibility and authority of internal auditing.
• Types of audits.
• Assessing the adequacy of accounting information systems control.

CMA Exam Part 2

Financial Statement Analysis

• Principal financial statements and their uses.
• Limitation of financial statement information.
• Interpretation and analysis of financial statement e.g. ratio and comparative analyses.
• Market value vs book value.
• Fair value accounting.
• Major difference between IFRS and US GAAP.
• Off-balance sheet financing.
• Cash-flow statement preparation, analysis and reconciliation.
• Earnings quality.

Corporate Finance

• Types of risk.
• Measures of risk.
• Portfolio management.
• Options and futures.
• Capital instruments for long-term financing.
• Dividend policy.
• Factors influencing the optimal capital structure.
• Cost of capital.
• Managing and financing working capital.
• Mergers and acquisitions.
• International finance.

Decision Analysis

• Relevant data concepts.
• Cost-volume-profit analysis.
• Marginal analysis.
• Make vs buy decisions.
• Pricing.
• Income tax implications for operational decision analysis.
• ERM.

Risk Management

• Operational risk, Hazard risk and financial risk and strategic risk.

Investment Decision

• Cash flow estimates.
• Concepts of DCF (discounted cash flow), net present value, IRR (internal rate of return).
• Non-discounting analysis techniques.
• Income tax implications for investment decisions.
• Ranking investment projects.
• Risk analysis.
• Real options.
• Valuation models.

Professional Ethics

• Ethical consideration for both management accountants and the organization.

Next Reading: The Exam’s Format
Structure and Duration

For Your Further Reading

Exam content, pass rate trend and difficulty of:

• CMA Part 1
• CMA Part 2

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Source: CMA Candidate Handbook