3 comments about The Controller's Function: The Work of the Managerial Accountant.

1. A very practical book for doing controller function in a small-to-large size organization. A good recommended book for controllers.



2. I am disappointed about this book. The book is basically written for students who know little about the business/accounting functions. I found the contents are not deep enough, at least not for veterans or accountants.Therefore, if you want a thorough knowledge of the controllership, this is not the one you should read. Try others.



3. ANy Controller will benefit from this well written, very comprehensive guide.

1 comments about Managerial Accounting: Tools for Business Decision Making.

1. If you're buying this book for a college class, you really have no choice so this review doesn't matter at all. If you're buying it to teach yourself managerial accounting you could do worse, though considering the price you could probably do much better too.

No comments about Controller's Guide to Costing.

No comments about Essentials of Cash Flow.

5 comments about Accounting for Decision Making and Control.

1. The great take away from this book is that executives try hard to achieve the optimal solutions for management problems, but that they seldomly succeed. The reason: they underestimate the creativity of their sub-ordinates (and their superiors).
   For ages students and lecturers thought management accounting was dull. Zimmerman shows how fascinating this subject can be. The decision making parts show how to calculate optimal solutions for management accounting problems, the control parts make your realize how difficult it is to make the optimal solutions come true. The implication: the amount of consulting work to be done is infinite.



2. The most surprising thing was how much of the book is homework problems (blue pages). Viewed edge-on they appear to be ~50% of the pages. Many problems are excessively wordy, fine as novellos but reading 2 pages to get to the issues is often tedious. The text is well written, but I didn't find the subject to have as much meat as other MBA subjects like Finance or Operations Research. I understand it is one of the better books on Managerial Accounting. I have 27 years experience at many companies, so others might find the material more enlightening.



3. Beware ! This book does perhaps the poorest example explaining any concepts. I have never had so much stress in my life than taking a managerial accounting class with this book. I mean I actually couldn't sleep because of this book!
   I took this class last year and I just finished my MBA and I am working on my Phd now, and I thought I would reflect and give some valuable advice to you, my fellow students.
   
   
   If you don't have a prior managerial accounting background, go read as much as you can before you get into this book. Or you will be completely stressed out, lost and feel that you are a dummy. This book makes smart students feel dum. I mean really dum. You are not dum, the book just lacks clear explanations.
   
   This book deals mostly with managerial accounting. For example if you are paid $100 per day at your job, really you are costing the company more than what you are being paid, really you use resources, like from human resources who hired you, electricity costs, phone costs, IT, etc, so your true cost to the company broken down is probably $160 per day. This is called cost allocation, in a crude example.
   
   Easy concept right?, Just that you will not be able to learn this easily from this book unless you have a deep prior background in this. The good examples Zimmerman(author) gives are spoiled by the majority of his jargon and bad examples.
   
   
   I honestly found myself at one point reading 1 page for over an hour to understand! (and I am a high A student). In my entire MBA program, I never had a worse book, nor more stress!!!
   
   Ultimately, I had to do many exhaustive Internet searches to learn cost allocation theory.
   
   Some reasons why this book is so bad:
   
   
   (1) Does not explain many concepts with clear explanations
   (2) Uses too much jargon
   (3) Shows graphs and vital data one the next pages instead of including them on the same page, Imagine as you read you have to constantly change the page to see the graphs and charts, Very poor!
   (4) Zimmeran doesn't want to teach, rather he wants to prove to you that he is smart!
   
   (5) THE WORST
   Perhaps the worst is the homework problems in the back. Zimmerman (the author) does not give sufficient examples of how to solve these examples. Nor does the book give the answers. Also, some problems are extremely hard, even the professor of the class had difficulty solving and explaining this. What is the goal of a book if students have to search elsewhere and be stressed out to learn?
   
   I would say that this book is like taking a class in Algebra and having questions and concepts explained in Calculus.
   
   Again, if you don't have a prior background in any of this, go take a class at a junior college on cost accounting to prepare for this book, you will need it. Or you too will be so stressed out!!
   
   Jerold Zimmerman, please don't take personal offense, you may be a smart guy, but the art of education is explaining concepts easily and showing your work, which in my opinion and my fellow students' opinion, overall this book lacks.
   
   GOOD LUCK to all students, and my prayers are with you if you have this book.



4. It contains philosophy and present contept to apply to the decision making. Managerial accounting is more than journal entry and computation. It's about decision making and performance evaluation.



5. While sellers may claim that the international edition is the same as the North American version (ISBN 0-07-297586-5), it is not true! While the content is similar, it is not the same. Just in Chapter 1, the problems do not match up. So, if you are an MBA student in a North American university, I recommend buying the North American edition. You think you will save a few bucks (like I did), but in the end you will have to buy the same edition as the rest of your class and get stuck with two books.

1 comments about Fraud Casebook: Lessons from the Bad Side of Business.

1. I have only read the first 100 hundred pages of Well's book and guarantee that if you are an auditor or in charge of audits this is a must have book!
   
   Johnie Wood
   Vice President, Security & Audits
   Major Corporation

No comments about Mergers & Acquisitions: A Condensed Practitioner's Guide.

2 comments about Hospitality Management Accounting.

1. I recently took a hospitality managerial accounting class at school and found this book extremely useful. There was so much in-depth information, along with illustrative examples, case studies, and useful problems and exercises. The student workbook also came in handy and helped me to pass the class.



2. I have been teaching all the chapters of this book for 9 months. There are many examples from hospitality industry and, in this sense, the book is indeed fine. It is mainly indented for students who would like to learn the "very basics" (in order to "pass the course") and apply them in practice. From a more academic point of view, the book suffers in many respects. It is rather wordy and poor in substance since there are no clear-cut definitions of the concepts used. Further, and this is very negative for me, there is no even the least reasoning or proof for any of the formulae used. Thus, in the best case, it encourages the logic of "apply the formula and interpret the results". Also, some accounting identities and formulae are written simply in an unacceptable way, from mathematics (and logic) point of view. There are some mistakes in the exercises and the formulation of many exercises, especially of the large ones, is unnecessarily complicated, sometimes the answers in the answer sheet are wrong and the presentation of solution is occasionally chaotic. Since no constructive arguments are developed for the building of the formulae, students are "forced" to apply formulae in a "mechanical" way . The result is that, even in the least modification of the problem under consideration, students try to find "the" formula to apply it. Of course, we cannot blame only the book for this since many students convey this "idea" from their years in school. The book simply follows this learning stance. Due to lack of a constructing reasoning, students do not learn to modify a formula or to built another one from first principles, according to the problem at hand. Hence, not a really constructive thinking is developed. I am looking for other, more substantial alternatives.

3 comments about Modern Cost Management and Analysis (Barron's Business Library).

1. This is a very well - organized introduction to cost accounting. There are some very useful chapters on cost behavior and cost estimation, as well as cost-volume-profit and break even analysis. The theory is very clear, however, the quantitative examples are basic. Not a complete study guide for the MBA student, but a great compendium to supplement theory and basic understanding. Plus, if you own several volumes from the Barron's Business Library you get the bonus of having them look cool on the bookshelf!



2. This little book is a wonderful review of all the things you need to consider if you are doing accounting in a manufacturing concern. The ideas are applicable as well for service organizations but the examples are geared toward accounting for manufactured products. The authors talk about when or why you would use a certain type of costing method rather than just explain how it's done. For example, they explain the reason for using Just In Time costing and the benefits over traditional cost accounting and describe what performance measures you would use with each system. I'm only halfway through my libray copy but have decided to buy my own to keep for reference.



3. The author tries to cover too many areas. He should have focused on COST MANAGEMENT and BUDGETS and taken one or two examples and defined all variances analysis from beginning to end, Then he would have HAD a fine book. Examples skip from one to another with no correlation to accentuating COST ANALYSIS-BUDGET development and management.

1 comments about Management Control Systems: Performance Measurement, Evaluation and Incentives (2nd Edition).

1. Well structured
   Coverage of profit anf no profit organizations
   Coverage of different cases to explain the chapters