Know what CAS asks of every contract. Before the auditor tells you.
See why your own books set the bill on a cost-type contract, then audit a kickoff memo for what CAS really asks.
Cost Accounting Standards decide how you measure, time and allocate cost on covered government work. Learn to read coverage off the contract, sort any standard by the question it answers, and keep what you disclosed matching what your books actually do.
Training + AI coaching + reusable workflows. Learn the CAS framework and use Coach Q to prepare coverage, allocation and cost-impact workflows. Your finance team checks the rules, figures and conclusions.
Built from 48 CFR Chapter 99, the CAS contract clauses and FAR Part 31 by a quality auditor with 20 years in the industry.
100+ years of combined quality and compliance experience, boiled down to one thing: keeping your books ready for the government's questions.
See how it works ↓Try lesson 1 before you pay. 3-day refund after you buy.
One-time course purchase. Lifetime lessons and your AI coach included.
Coach Q, your private AI coach, comes with your course. No subscription or renewal fee. Your purchased lessons remain available for life.
Training a team? Accounting and contracts learn the same rules, so your books and your bids tell the same story.
10% off for 5 or more people.
- Read CAS coverage off a contract, and keep what you disclosed matching what your books actually do
- A certificate of completion anyone can verify
- Private AI coach for this subject, included with your course
- Updated for the 2026 CAS Board final rules
- 66 real-world scenarios and 61 AI checkpoints where you work real cases with your coach
- Every lesson, yours for life
3-day refund window. Refund policy
More than 50 people, or need an invoice instead? Email will@qmslearning.com for a quote.
Learn it. Practice it. Bring it to work.
Build subject knowledge, earn your course certificate and prepare work you can check and use.
Finish the course and your certificate of completion shows your name, the course and the date. Anyone can confirm it at academy.qmslearning.com/verify, and you can add it to your LinkedIn profile in one click. It records your course achievement; your workplace results come from applying and checking the work.
Work through the lessons at your own pace. Ask Coach Q to explain a concept, try another example or question your reasoning. Use the course study plan and focus timer to fit learning around your week.
Use Course Hub to create workflow materials, save revisions and keep reusable templates. Download your work for review by the people who will use it. Your lessons remain available for life, and AI coaching comes with your course.
Learn the skill. Put your AI coach to work.
When a practice change is coming and you need to know if it triggers a cost impact, return to the method with Coach Q. Your AI quality and compliance colleague helps you think through the problem and build a workflow you can review.
Know what good work needs
Learn Cost Accounting Standards, work through the course scenarios and ask your AI coach to explain what is unclear. Bring your own reasoning and ask it to challenge the gaps.
Build a reusable workflow
Use the Course Hub document tools to prepare a CAS coverage determination, an allocation base justification, a cost impact worksheet and a DCAA audit prep pack, using the facts you supply.
You'll check every figure against your own ledgers and every rule against the regulation. Your finance team signs, not the AI.
Start the next job with a method
Edit your workflow materials, save revisions, download your work, or save the structure as a reusable template. For the next case, replace the old facts and check the new evidence before drawing conclusions.
Your saved work is in Course Hub when you return to the same account.
An expert in your pocket means an AI coach within reach. Learn in your browser, then return when you need help applying the subject. AI output can be wrong; you and your organization own the review and the decision.
Coach Q, your private AI coach, comes with your course. No subscription or renewal fee. Your purchased lessons remain available for life.
No surprises when the government checks your books.
Short lessons, a plan that fits your week, and a coach who knows the job. These are real screens from the course, and the label says when one comes from another course. Click through at your own pace.
Practice real cost decisions before an auditor asks about them.
Short lessons, then hands-on exercises built on situations you'll actually face. Make your call, then see how an experienced pro would handle it.
- Built on situations you'll actually face
- See how a pro would handle it
- Pick up right where you left off
Ready when you are.
$295 per person, one-time. Lifetime access to the lessons · AI coach included · No subscription · 3-day refund window.
10% off for 5 or more people.
CAS problems stay quiet for years. Then they show up with a dollar figure.
“We took one cost-type contract and now we have rules.”
There's no market price to check a cost-type bill against, so the government relies on how you account for cost. You'll learn why CAS exists and how to explain it to your CFO in five sentences.
“DCAA says we owe money. Do we write the check?”
An audit finding is an opening position, not a verdict. You'll learn who writes the standards, who audits, who administers and who actually decides, and how to answer with evidence.
“We reorganized and never updated the Disclosure Statement.”
Nobody meant to. But once a practice is disclosed you have to follow it, and the gap between the form and the books is exactly what gets tested. You'll learn to revise before the change, not after.
“Can the holiday party go on the contract?”
Two questions are hiding in that invoice: is it allocable, and is it allowable. You'll learn to separate them, and to count a cost correctly even when you can't bill it.
“We pulled the unallowable costs out of the books.”
It feels safe, but unallowable costs still carry their share of indirect cost. Pull them from the base and your allowable work absorbs the difference. You'll learn to screen, segregate, document and defend instead.
“Our billing rates were way off by year end.”
Provisional rates are estimates. The incurred cost submission trues them up to actual, and you either pay back or get paid. You'll learn how a rate is built, billed and settled.
Myth or fact?
Four things people get wrong about CAS coverage. Make your call on each one.
“Small businesses have to follow CAS.”
“Modified coverage means following every standard.”
“From October 1, 2026, a negotiated $30 million contract is exempt from CAS.”
“On DoD contracts entered after June 30, 2026, the certified cost or pricing data threshold is $10 million.”
0 of 4 checked. Tap Myth or Fact on each one.
A course built on calls you'll have to make, not definitions.
Counted from the live course.
You don't just learn the standards. You work the cases.
Every lesson has an AI checkpoint. Some ask you to explain a call in your own words, and many ask you to prepare the memo, email or calculation a controller would actually send. Coach Q works each one with you.
A CAS explainer for your CFO
Five sentences on why one cost-reimbursement contract puts your accounting under rules the commercial work never had.
Module 1A coverage call on a new award
Read the CAS clause, tell full from modified from exempt, and prepare the note on whether the clause flows down to a subcontract.
Coverage and flow-downAn allocation base you can defend
Choose between labor hours and labor dollars for a shared pool, and show why the base follows what drives the cost.
CAS 418 · CAS 410An unallowables close-out
Find the lobbying payment sitting in a training account, segregate it, and document the close before the billing goes out.
CAS 405 · FAR Part 31A Disclosure Statement revision
A reorganization moves engineering cost into G and A. Explain what has to happen to the Disclosure Statement before the change takes effect.
Form CASB-DS-1A rate true-up and a cost impact
Work a year-end fringe true-up, then walk a practice change through the rough estimate first and the detailed impact only if it's material.
Modules 10 and 11Learn it, practice it, prove it, use it.
Three questions, not a list of numbers
Sort every standard by the question it answers: how much, when, and which job pays. Short lessons, with a 15-second briefing video at the start of each module.
66 scenarios with explained answers
Allocable or allowable, full or modified, adequacy or compliance. Every call comes with the reasoning, not just the answer, plus a check in every lesson.
Finish every lesson, earn the certificate
The last lesson is an audit-day walk-through that uses every module. Finish every lesson and your certificate of completion is issued. There is no final exam on this course.
Your own contracts, with your coach
Run the same checks on your real awards, your rates and your Disclosure Statement. Coach Q comes with your course.
Ask the question you'd ask a govcon controller. Get a straight answer.
Coach Q comes with your course. It points you to the standard, the question it answers and the evidence. It proposes, you decide.
Probably not on that award. Contracts with small businesses are exempt from CAS under 48 CFR 9903.201-1(b). Coverage attaches to the contract, not the company, so confirm it award by award: check the CAS clause the contracting officer wrote in, and your small business status for that contract.
Exempt from CAS isn't exempt from the cost rules. Whether a cost is allowable is a separate FAR Part 31 question, and a cost-type contract still needs books that keep unallowable costs out and track cost by contract.
Want me to prepare a one-page coverage check you can run on every new award?
From your first lesson to books that match what you told the government.
12 modules. About 17.5 hours of self-paced lessons.
- Module 1
The Ground Floor
Why CAS exists, who enforces it, and the one distinction new govcon accountants get backwards. 5 lessons.
- Module 2
The Three Questions
Measurement, assignment, allocation, and the consistency wrap: the lens that unlocks every standard. 5 lessons.
- Module 3
Does CAS Even Apply to You?
Exemptions, full vs modified coverage, the clauses, flow-down, and the 2026 threshold change. 6 lessons.
- Module 4
The Consistency Family
Standards 401, 402, 405, and 406, the rules that wrap all the others. 5 lessons.
- Module 5
Allocation and Overhead
How indirect cost reaches a contract: pools, bases, home office, G and A, and the base games (403, 410, 418, 420). 5 lessons.
- Module 6
Assets, Depreciation, and Cost of Money
Long-lived things and imputed cost: capitalization, depreciation and material (404, 409 and 411, rescinded in 2026) and cost of money (414, 417). 5 lessons.
- Module 7
People and Pensions
Charging the cost of people to the years they earn it: paid absence (408, rescinded in 2026), pensions, and deferred pay (412, 413, 415). 5 lessons.
- Module 8
Unallowables and the Standalone Standards
Unallowable cost in practice plus the two standards that fit no family: standard costs (407, rescinded in 2026, its core now in 418) and insurance (416). 5 lessons.
- Module 9
The Disclosure Statement
Form CASB-DS-1: the binding written description of your practices, and the number one finding in the field. 5 lessons.
- Module 10
The Indirect Rate Machine
How indirect cost reaches a bill: pools, rates, forward pricing, provisional billing, the incurred cost submission, and accounting-system adequacy. 5 lessons.
- Module 11
Living with CAS
The machinery after the standards: practice-change categories, cost impact (GDM and DCI), the 52.230-6 clocks, offsets, and materiality. 5 lessons.
- Module 12
What Changed in 2025 and 2026
The 2025 and 2026 GAAP-conformance rules and rescissions, the thresholds in effect from October 1, 2026, the durable core that survives every rule change, and a capstone audit-day walk through all twelve modules. 5 lessons.
Built for the people who keep the books a contracting officer relies on.
- Controllers and accounting managers at government contractors
- CFOs whose company just took on cost-type work
- Contracts managers who read CAS clauses and flow them down
- Compliance leads getting ready for a DCAA audit
Written by a quality auditor with 20 years in the industry, from 48 CFR Chapter 99, the CAS clauses and FAR Part 31, and built around the questions an auditor actually asks: which standard, which question it answers, and does the Disclosure Statement match the books.
NCMA's Cost Accounting Standards course costs $230 for non-members and runs 2 hours, self-paced (published price, checked September 27, 2026). This course is $295, runs at your pace, and goes about 17.5 hours deep: coverage, allocation, the Disclosure Statement, indirect rates and cost impact.
Straight answers.
What does an expert in my pocket mean?
Can I use what I learn on a real problem?
Can I reuse the work for the next job?
Does the course reflect the 2026 CAS Board final rules?
Is this a certification?
How do I earn the certificate of completion?
Do I need a CAS background?
How long do I keep access?
Can my company pay?
What if it isn't for me?
Training a team?
Read the contract. Keep the books to match.
$295. About 17.5 hours. Coverage, the three questions, the Disclosure Statement and your rates, in plain terms.
10% off for 5 or more people.
3-day refund window · Lifetime access to the lessons · Certificate anyone can verify · AI coach included · No subscription