2 comments about The Essentials of Finance and Accounting for Nonfinancial Managers.

1. Edward Fields' Essentials Of Finance And Accounting For Nonfinancial Managers tells how to understand the basics of a balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement and annual reports. Newcomers to reading company financials will appreciate the clear explanations on investment returns, analysis ratios, and other methods of understanding business reports.



2. Book was well written and speaks directly to someone who has never worked with the finances of a corporation.

1 comments about Money Wise: How to Create, Grow, and Preserve Your Wealth.

1. Unfortunately for me, I do not have to ask myself the "What now?" question about my wealth because I haven't amassed it yet. Many of you have created great wealth for yourselves and Michael Lipper and Douglas Sease have written a book specifically for you, to help you preserve the wealth that you have worked so hard to create and how to make it even bigger! Do you even know how much wealth you have? This book will help you to measure your wealth, learn about investing and what works for you, learn how to spend your wealth and when not to spend it. Mike Lipper is an analyst who has helped develop the Lipper Indices for mutual funds, so you are hearing this from an expert that can really help you. If you have been successful and have accumulated wealth that you just don't know how to handle, take the advice of a credible, and proven expert to make your money work for you and not against you. Many people are scared of investing, advisors and money, this book will help you shelve your fears.
   If you are like me and don't have any wealth as of yet, I would recommend you read this book so that when your wealth hits you, you know what to do with it in a smart and knowledgeable way.

2 comments about Schaum's Outline of Bookkeeping and Accounting (Schaum's Outlines).

1. Just what I was looking for. College accounting was long ago and unused for many years. This book is a great one for dusting off the brain cells. It is well written, easy to understand, and even has T account diagrams. It's like college in the comfort of my own home. The exercises are to the point and provide ample worksheet space. Much better and certainly more affordable than many textbooks.



2. This well-written text closely tracks the content of "Survey of Accounting" and "College Accounting" textbooks and courses offered at many community and 4-year colleges. ("Principles of Accounting" courses are similar, but they contain more theory than the other two. This book is still good, but might need some supplements.) The exercises and problems are excellent, and the solutions appear right after them so it's easy to check your work. I would have given 5 stars if there were a few more memory aids and helpful hints to make learning the material even easier. But overall, very good and easy to follow.

4 comments about Survey of Accounting.

1. This book provided a great deal of useful information on general accounting and business financial practices.



2. This is a good overview of financial and managerial accounting. It provides the necessary details to understand the accouting system and financial management practices.
   It could be improved by better defining T-accounts equal ledgers in most accounting practices.



3. This is an outstanding book for studying accounting. It gives an excellent survey of basic financial and managerial accounting. Students will find a treasured spot with the online resources. The lessons presented in PowerPoint are great learning tools to reinforce each chapter in the book. Using the templates to complete homework assignments is just wonderful. I recommend students don't just pass over these resources without even trying them. They will make your studies much easier.



4. Excellent work -- easily understood by non-academic types; filled with easy-to-understand chapters and great examples. Would be useful to any new or returning accounting student.

3 comments about Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers (Financial Intelligence) (Financial Intelligence) (Financial Intelligence).

1. 
   Several years ago, I read and reviewed Finance for Managers, one of the volumes in the Harvard Business Essentials series. The material provided in it is drawn from a variety of sources which include William J. Bruns, Jr., Michael J. Roberts, and Robert S. Kaplan as well as Harvard Business School Publishing and Harvard ManageMentor®, an online service. Samuel L. Hayes served as subject advisor to Richard Luecke, author of this and other books in the Harvard Business School Essentials Series as well as more than 30 other books in the series as well as several dozen articles. What we have in Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs, co-authored by Karen Berman and Joe Knight with John Case (also author of Open-Book Management and The Open-Book Experience), are information and advice that respond directly to the needs of those who are planning to launch a new company or have only recently done so. I think the material will also be of substantial benefit to decision-makers in companies that seek to become more entrepreneurial.
   
   At a GE annual meeting, then CEO Jack Welch explained why he thought so highly of "small, sleek" business operations: "For one, they communicate better. Without the din and prattle of bureaucracy, people listen as well as talk; and since there are fewer of them they generally know and understand each other. Second, small companies move faster. They know the penalties for hesitation in the marketplace. Third, in small companies, with fewer layers and less camouflage, the leaders show up very clearly on the screen. Their performance and its impact are clear to everyone. And, finally, smaller companies waste less. They spend less time in endless reviews and approvals and politics and paper drills. They have fewer people; therefore they can only do the important things. Their people are free to direct their energy and attention toward the marketplace rather than fighting bureaucracy." This seems to have served as a model for "bowing up" of GE after Welch became its CEO in 1981. At that time, its market value was $14 billion; twenty-three years later, it was more than $410 billion.
   
   I share all this by way of creating a frame-of-reference for what is provided in this volume, a new edition of a book first published (entitled Financial Intelligence) in 2006. Although the focus in this second edition is on entrepreneurs, the material provided will help all managers to develop the entrepreneurial mindset to which Welch refers, and, to acquire a highly-developed financial intelligence quotient (FIQ). Moreover, they can then do everything they possibly can to develop a high-level of FIQ among others at all levels and in all areas of their organization. In the Preface, Berman and Knight explain what their reader will learn:
   
   1. How to read the three major financial statements (i.e. income, balance sheet, and cash flow) and how to interpret what they contain
   
   2. How to calculate critical ratios and to understand what they reveal
   
   3. Why net cash in a given time period is not the same as profit and why a company needs both profit and cash
   
   4. How to use various return on investment (ROI) tools to analyze big purchases in order to make certain the investments add sufficient value to the business
   
   5. How to manage working capital that helps to improve a company's cash flow and profitability even when there is no change in sales or expenses
   
   6. How to use the three main methods for establishing the value of a business (i.e. the price-to-earnings ratio method, the discounted cash flow method, and the asset valuation method) "and many other tricks of the financial trade"
   
   "Along the way, we'll let you in on the finance profession's little secret, which is that finance is as much art as it is science." Berman and Knight explain why understanding this "little secret" is so important to acquiring a high-level of financial intelligence.
   
   They carefully organize their material within 30 chapters that are divided among eight sequential Parts: The Art of Finance (and Why It Matters), The (Many) Peculiarities of the Income Statement, The Balance Sheet Reveals the Most, Cash Is King, Ratios: Learning What the Numbers Are Really Telling You, How to Calculate and (Really) Understand Return on Investment, Applied Financial Intelligence: Working Capital Management, and Creating a Financially Intelli9gent Company. They also provide three appendices: Sample Financials, Exercises to Build Your Financial Intelligence - Income Statement; Balance Sheet; Cash Flow Statement; Ratios, and Under Armour and eBay Financial Statements. At the conclusion of each Part, there are contributions to the filling of the reader's "Toolbox."
   
   Other reviewers will have their own reasons for admiring this book. Here are three of mine. First, this is not a "Finance for Dummies" although a financial novice will find nothing in it that is over her or his head. With consummate skill, Berman and Knight present and explain substance without compromising it. And when doing so, they prepare each reader to help others to increase their own FIQ by providing a model for those initiatives. In fact, Berman and Knight consider those efforts to be so important that they devote the final three chapters (Part Eight) to explaining how to create a financially intelligent company. I also appreciate this book because the authors immediately establish and then sustain a personal (rather than professorial) rapport with their reader. They use direct address throughout the narrative. For readers who are financial novices, they anticipate and address the concerns. For other readers with more developed FIQ (especially CFOs, comptrollers, office managers, and accountants) they offer a systematic review of material (e.g. nomenclature and core concepts of finance) that is already familiar to them. However, there is much to be said for reminders of what can sometimes be neglected or ignored. Finally, I appreciate the dozens of examples drawn from real-world situations that illustrate some of Berman and Knight's key points. This is especially appropriate, given the conversational (rather than professorial) tone that they sustain throughout the narrative.
   
   One final point: All organizations have an urgent and constant need to reduce (if not eliminate) waste. Increasing the FIQ of as many workers as possible will enable them to recognize and, better yet, understand the bottom-line impact of waste and will thus be more likely to become not only involved but engaged in efforts to help their organization to reduce (if not eliminate) waste. If I were a CEO of a company, I would purchase a copy of this book for every line manager and make it required reading. And if my company has not already devised and then implemented an FIQ education program, to be implemented throughout the enterprise to varying degree, I would immediately appoint a cross-functional team of my best and brightest to do so.
   
   I congratulate Karen Berman and Joe Knight together with John Case on a brilliant achievement. Bravo!



2. As a classic small business owner who wears every hat, including CFO but not being very good at it, this book is an invaluable resource for me. I am one of those people who picked up Berman and Knight's original Financial Intelligence and said, "Hey, I need this information for myself and my business." The book takes you through the basics of P&Ls and balance sheets and cash flow and all of the financial mumbo jumbo that you aren't taught unless you go to business school, and turns it into tangible, easy to digest concepts that even someone with no financial acumen or education can understand. The most enlightening part of the book is the premise that finances are an art as well as a science. I always believed that numbers are numbers and they don't lie. Berman and Knight set me straight and set me free, teaching me that even as a non-financial expert, I can understand, manage and interpret my own bottom line.



3. Financial issues always plagued my businesses for years - lost one due to lack of financial understanding now I see where I made my mistakes. This book will help me with my new busines - I plan to buy copies for everyone in my company.

No comments about Bisk CPA Review: Regulation - 38th Edition 2009-2010 (Comprehensive CPA Exam Review Regulation).

No comments about Zondervan 2009 Church and Nonprofit Tax and Financial Guide: For 2008 Returns (Zondervan Church and Nonprofit Tax Financial Guide).

4 comments about Corporate Finance Demystified.

1. I am a very experience small business person. I picked up this text to obtain an overview of more advanced corporate finance as a precursor to more intensive study. I found the text failed for my purposes.
   
   While the text is promoted as a self-teaching guide, this is not, in my opinion a beginner book. I ended chapters more confused than when I started (NOT due to the complexity of the material or my inability but due to the poor text). For example, there is no glossary to quickly look-up new terms as one might expect for a self-study guide. Far too much of the book is made up of multiple choice "self-tests" in each chapter with only a list of the correct multiple choice answers in the back of the book (no explanations).
   
   An example of the issues with the book is in the fairly basic, Chapter 3. Chapter 3 covers financial statements and apparently corporate taxes (all in six, light format, pages). The chapter introduces basic balance sheets and cash flow statements. The text then discusses taxes but does not really explain why tax rate tiers vary according to corporate income, whether the rates indicated are typical, nor even why taxes are discussed fairly in-depth (I speak relatively here since I generally found little depth in the text) in a basic overview of simple financial statements. The text then sharply transitions in the same chapter to Cash Flow From Assets where several formulas as acronyms are introduced without fully explaining the acronyms (some you can figure out, some remain a msytery). (Again, there is no glossary, and the index self-refers to the acronym itself.) Total coverage of the topic--about 6 pages of text including the example balance sheets and tax tables followed by four pages of "test questions."
   
   Each chapter ends with a self-test presumably to test knowledge. Again, Chapter 3 is an example. I created an Excel spreadsheet on my own to work some of the problems (I really do want to learn this material). However, the questions ask about non-existent information (referring to 2004 figures when the text has examples from 2006-2007). (This may seem like a simple typographical error but is confusing since the answer explanation does not explain the answer. You are left guessing the answer and then trying to decipher both the question and the applying (hopefully) analysis skills). Then, a question introduces marginal tax rate as a question but is never explained in the text. The index, again no glossary, refers to the question itself as the explanation (for comparison, Wikipedia gives a clear, seven paragraph analysis of marginal tax rate).
   
   I had high hopes for this text and was committed to the topic. I was very disappointed. Since I am unfamiliar with the material, the evident errors make me question the quality of the rest of the material (i.e., if the errors are clear in some sections, how can I, as a novice, trust the materials I am unfamiliar with--for example formulas and comparisons?)



2. I am reviewing Corporate Finance, which I first took a year ago, in preparation for an advanced course that I will soon take. This book is good for my purposes. It is concise and clear, yet still often takes the time to explain, elaborate, and interpret information. However, the presentation is a little bit too concise for an initial presentation, and there are some typos in the quizzes and examples--better proofreading is needed. If you're looking for a fuller explanation, I have found that the textbooks by Stephen Ross are good (eg Fundamentals of Corporate Finance--he has several similarly titled books--the above named is for the first course for undergrad finance majors).



3. I found the book to be worth the money as a supplement, but it did not replace the texbook for my class in corporate finance. Most helpful were the problems at the end of each chapter.



4. This book attempts to cover, more or less, the content of a typical introductory course in corporate/managerial finance. While the cover claims to "cover all key concepts of corporate finance" and that it contains "clear discussion of all the complex issues," it fails on both counts. Most, but not all, key concepts are covered, and due to the length of the book, many of the more complicated concepts only have a page or two devoted to them. The book assumes that one already has a basic knowledge of accounting and mid-level algebra, and to a lesser extent, microeconomics and macroeconomics. I am a little weak on the math angle, and the book has a habit of displaying a formula that isn't used or explained until several pages later in the book. The quizzes themselves are multiple choice, "A" through "D," but the answer key only gives the correct letter choice. It does not explain how or why any given answer has been arrived at, which is very frustrating if the book hasn't given adequate coverage or explanations of certain functions, which is often.
   
   The book gives generic instructions on how to use a financial calculator to solve some of its problems, but you'll need to dig into your calculator's manual, as the generic instructions were different enough that I usually couldn't directly follow them.
   
   As another reviewer pointed out, there are definite errors in the quiz questions, where it will refer to non-existent information, and one has to guess what part of what chart or figure it might really be referring to. I also believe that sometimes the answer key for a quiz will give the wrong answer, say "A" when the answer is really "C." Unfortunately, the book is published by McGraw-Hill, which, in my experience, goes out of its way to be unhelpful and unresponsive. One can navigate to the Business section of McGraw-Hill's website, go to contacts, e-mail the address given for errata requests, several times, and enjoy deafening silence. Other publishers often print errata on their websites to begin with. I don't think McGraw-Hill stands behind their books, and I think it shows in the quality of their offerings.
   
   "Corporate Finance Demystified" is something you can learn from, but much of it is confusing slog until things begin to fall into place (and not everything does), and you will need to seek out alternative sources of information to understand what "Corporate Finance Demystified" often fails to fully explain.

1 comments about Financial Management for Nonprofits: The Complete Guide to Maximizing Resources and Managing Assets.

1. Starting off, I had no idea where to begin which the financial management of a non-profit. I was worried this book would read through like an accounting textbook, but that is not the case at all. The book gives practical advice about running a non-profit and how this differs for a for-profit organization. There are also a lot of basic financial statements to use as examples. While this book did not contain all the information I was looking for, I found it to be a great starting point in my learning process.

5 comments about How to Use Financial Statements: A Guide to Understanding the Numbers.

1. The best book of its type: covers key points in a direct and effective way. If you need to refresh understanding of financial statements, or learn the basic in a concise format you will be pleased with this book. As a finance professor and practioner (CFA) I have recommended Bandler to numerous students and associates.



2. This book teaches anyone (from owners, to managers, to employees, to customers, to lenders, to suppliers, and to attorneys) how to obtain answers from financial statements by asking the right questions. This book is not filled with esoteric symbols and mathematical babbles, but with clear diagrams and down to earth explanations of the applications of each part of the financial statements. The author has done an excellent job on making this seemingly confusing subject very easy to understand and useful to those who needs to make decisions from it.



3. I had a basic understanding of financial statements from accounting courses in college, but had forgotten most of it in the past 7 years. This book was a great refresher and would probably also be a good first book for someone with zero - very limited knowledge.



4. There is no doubt that the author is extremely knowledgeable about financial statements, but he struggles to write a clear introduction for newcomers. I finished the book with a muddy, incomplete understanding of financial statements.
   
   In his attempt to introduce financial statements to first-timers like me, the author gets a couple things right:
   - it's short. the length is a very comforting 130 pages.
   - it's illustrated. there are drawings of scales with profit/loss, etc. This is essential for visual learners like me.
   
   However, the author fails on these points:
   - cute phrases instead of genuine insight. The author's little jokes in the text felt a little self-indulgent, and didn't help explain. There is one exception: it was useful when the author describes the fans of the various reports - P/L vs Balance vs Cash Flow. However, most of the rest of the joking was irrelevant and amateur.
   - Not well written. Like many technical books, the quality of writing was poor. Many parts like first drafts - left me with lots of questions. The illustrations often felt incomplete and didn't help explain much.
   - Expert blindness. In some ways, experts are the worst people to write books for beginners. They are passionate about the details and history, which is not what newcomers need.
   
   I understand why financial experts would recommend this book to newcomers: they share the passions of the author. However, this doesn't help newcomers. I will keep shopping for the book that gives me the basic 'big picture' understanding of financial statements I need.



5. I am very happy with financial statements. It is clear, concise and gets right to the point. Plus it's light too. Overall I am happy with my purchase.