Corporate Business Alliance

CBA-CAM · Study material

Contents

The complete contents of the CBA Certified Accounting Manager study material: every chapter and lesson, the reading time of each, and where the assessed workbooks fall. One lesson is open to read in full.

Lessons

79

Reading time

4 hours

Workbooks

16

Words

54,116

These figures are counted from the material itself. The reading time assumes a steady pace and no re-reading, and does not include the time spent building the workbooks.

Free, no account

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Cut-off: the decision that makes the rest of the close either real or decorative, from Close Cycle Management, as a candidate reads it, slides included.

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Contents

6 chapters, 79 lessons. Lessons marked workbook carry a spreadsheet you build and submit, marked against the published tolerance. The award requires 4 of the 16 completed to that tolerance.

Introduction

1 lesson · 2 min

  1. CBA-CAM Study Guide2 min

01Close Cycle Management

15 lessons · 62 min

  1. What this chapter covers3 min
  2. What the close is for, and what that implies about how you run it3 min
  3. The close calendar as a management instrumentworkbook6 min
  4. Hard, soft and continuous close: choosing a model3 min
  5. Cut-off: the decision that makes the rest of the close either real or decorativeFree3 min
  6. Accruals, prepayments and provisions as a managed portfolioworkbook7 min
  7. Reconciliation discipline: performing, reviewing and ageing7 min
  8. Flux review: the last gate before you publishworkbook5 min
  9. Compressing the close: what actually moves the critical path9 min
  10. Materiality: the threshold that makes speed defensible2 min
  11. Year end against month endworkbook5 min
  12. When a close slips: triage and recovery3 min
  13. Measuring the close, and improving it deliberately2 min
  14. Common pitfalls2 min
  15. Chapter summary2 min

02Internal Controls and Risk

13 lessons · 56 min

  1. What this chapter covers2 min
  2. Designing controls against risk, not against a checklist3 min
  3. Risk assessment for an accounting process4 min
  4. Preventive, detective and corrective controlsworkbook5 min
  5. Segregation of duties when the team is too small5 min
  6. Compensating controls that actually compensateworkbook3 min
  7. Authorisation limits and delegation5 min
  8. Fraud risk in a distributed operation8 min
  9. Journals, system access and the January cutoverworkbook6 min
  10. Automating a control without losing it2 min
  11. Responding to a control failure8 min
  12. Common pitfalls3 min
  13. Chapter summary2 min

03Team and Workflow Management

13 lessons · 44 min

  1. What this chapter covers2 min
  2. The task inventory: you cannot manage work you have not listedworkbook5 min
  3. Allocating against skill, capacity and control6 min
  4. The review hierarchy: what review means and what it must leave behind5 min
  5. Delegation, abdication and the space between them2 min
  6. Managing outsourced and remote colleagues4 min
  7. Developing part-qualified staff without destabilising the function2 min
  8. Diagnosing performance problems before responding to them4 min
  9. Key-person risk and documentation that survives absenceworkbook3 min
  10. Peak periods: levelling demand rather than adding heroics4 min
  11. Choosing between hiring, outsourcing and automatingworkbook3 min
  12. Common pitfalls2 min
  13. Chapter summary2 min

04Leadership Reporting and Communication

21 lessons · 59 min

  1. What this chapter covers2 min
  2. The pack is an instrument of decision, not a record2 min
  3. Knowing who reads it and what they decide2 min
  4. The architecture of a pack that gets read4 min
  5. Choosing the indicators: what earns a place2 min
  6. Cash, working capital and headroomworkbook4 min
  7. Variance analysis that explains rather than describes2 min
  8. Setting the materiality filterworkbook5 min
  9. The bridge: getting from budget to actual in one pictureworkbook2 min
  10. Commentary that leads with the decision4 min
  11. Reporting bad news early5 min
  12. Talking to non-financial managers about their own numbers4 min
  13. Currency, constant currency and the Dublin depot2 min
  14. Board and audit committee expectations3 min
  15. The reporting timetable: speed against precision4 min
  16. Ad hoc requests: triage, scope and the single source of truth2 min
  17. Dashboards, version control and the discipline of one published copy2 min
  18. AI assistance in reporting, and where it fails2 min
  19. Measuring whether the pack works2 min
  20. Common pitfalls2 min
  21. Chapter summary2 min

05Systems, Automation and Data

16 lessons · 41 min

  1. What this chapter covers2 min
  2. Start with the systems map, not the system decision2 min
  3. Requirements before demonstrationsworkbook4 min
  4. Chart of accounts and dimensions that survive growth4 min
  5. Interfaces: what flows automatically and how you prove it2 min
  6. Data migration: deciding what moves2 min
  7. Cutover: sequencing reliance, not just the load4 min
  8. Proving it arrived: the migration reconciliationworkbook4 min
  9. Choosing what to automateworkbook3 min
  10. What stays manual, and why2 min
  11. Controls over automated postings2 min
  12. Spreadsheet control in a finance function2 min
  13. AI assistance: the workflow and its failure mode2 min
  14. Data that must never leave the boundary2 min
  15. Common pitfalls2 min
  16. Chapter summary2 min

What the material is

The study material is written to the discipline’s domains and learning objectives, chapter by chapter, with worked examples and unscored checks in the lessons and assessed workbooks where the level requires applied work. It does not contain a bank of practice questions matching the examination; the specimen paper shows the style and standard of the examination, with a written rationale for every option.

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