Management Accounting & Finance Tutoring

In South African CA(SA) studies, they are two names for one subject. At undergraduate level, many universities split these into two separate modules: a management accounting module covering costing methods, budgets, and variance analysis, and a financial management module covering capital budgeting, cost of capital, and working capital. At CTA (PGDA) level, SAICA combines them into one subject called MAF (Management Accounting and Finance). So if you are searching for a management accounting tutor or a financial management tutor on the CA(SA) pathway, you are looking for MAF support.

I cover all the costing methods that appear in SAICA assessments and the ITC: absorption costing and marginal (variable) costing, including the reconciliation between the two profit figures; activity-based costing (ABC), where the focus is identifying cost drivers and allocating overheads more accurately than blanket rates; standard costing and variance analysis (material price and usage, labour rate and efficiency, fixed overhead volume and expenditure); and process costing and job costing. At CTA level, questions combine costing methods with relevant-cost decision scenarios, so we also practise differentiating between relevant and sunk costs in make-or-buy, accept-or-reject, and limiting-factor problems.

This is one of the most useful things to understand if you are preparing for the APC. In the ITC, MAF appears as a technical subject paper alongside Financial Accounting, Tax, and Auditing. The ITC tests your knowledge of costing methods, variance analysis, and financial management calculations. In the APC, the entire exam is one integrated case study and MAF appears through the management-decision-making lens: you might be asked to advise on a capital investment decision using NPV and IRR, evaluate a make-or-buy choice using relevant costing, or assess the impact of a pricing decision on contribution margin. The APC rewards candidates who can apply MAF thinking to a complex business scenario, not just reproduce a standard costing schedule. This applied, decision-focused angle is what I prepare APC candidates for specifically.

Yes. Net present value and internal rate of return are high-mark areas in both the ITC and APC, and they catch a lot of students who understand the concept but make errors under exam pressure. The common failure points I see are: not identifying the correct discount rate (pre-tax vs post-tax, WACC vs project-specific risk adjustment), forgetting to include working capital movements and terminal recovery, treating initial investment and tax-depreciation shields correctly, and interpolating IRR when the exact rate is not given. I work through these systematically, starting from the cash-flow identification step and building up to full NPV and IRR answers in exam format.

At first year level, MAF tutoring usually means the introduction to management accounting: cost classification, cost-volume-profit analysis and break-even, absorption vs marginal costing, and basic budgeting. Second year adds standard costing and variance analysis, activity-based costing, and more complex budgeting including the master budget and flexible budgets. Third year introduces financial management concepts: time value of money, net present value and payback, cost of capital, and working capital management. I work with students from UNISA (MNG2601, MNG3701, MNG3702 and the relevant FAC/financial management modules), UCT, Wits, UP, and Stellenbosch on the level-specific content.

Send a WhatsApp message to +27 71 325 5295. Let me know which level you are at (undergrad/PGDA/CTA or APC), whether you are working on the costing/management accounting side or the financial management/capital budgeting side, and what you are specifically struggling with. I will confirm availability and we will schedule a session.