Performance Management
How to find out why the actual results didn’t match the plan.
Why this topic exists
Results always differ from the budget. Your value is explaining exactly why — was it price, volume, efficiency, or something outside anyone’s control?
What you’ll be able to do
- ✓Break a miss down into its real causes
- ✓Judge managers fairly on what they can actually control
- ✓Design measures that don’t accidentally encourage bad behaviour
This is what business partnering means — being the person leadership asks "what happened?"
The variance formulas look intimidating written down. In practice you’re answering one question: what changed, price or quantity?
FP&A Analyst · Management Accountant · Business Controller · Finance Business Partner
About 4 weeks of study. of the full Part 1 course.
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Plan meets reality
The difference between what should have happened and what actually happened is not an embarrassment — it is a signal. Finance calls these signals variances.
Responsibility Centre City
Different districts of a company are answerable for different things — evaluate each on what it can actually control.
The transfer pricing challenge
Manufacturing sells a component to Assembly — inside the same company. The internal price changes each division's profit, and can quietly change their behaviour.
This is a summary for orientation, not the official syllabus. The complete content specification is published by IMA at imanet.org. In class we cover all of it, in order, with MCQs after every concept.
You don’t have to figure this out alone.
Every topic here is taught live by a CA or CMA, followed by MCQs solved together until the logic sticks. Watch a free demo before deciding anything.