Complete Guide to Finance and Accounting

For a standard paperback trying to cover two subjects that usually take up a few phonebook-sized texts each, this one does a pretty good job. After reading, you should be able to walk away with a decent grasp of the fundamental concepts of accounting: income statements, balance sheets, LIFO vs. FIFO, etc., as well as the philosophies behind all the many millions of rules, and how to use those rules to make a company look healthier. Most of the book concentrates on accounting; coverage of finance is mostly limited to the final chapter on ratio analysis. Note that this still isn't light reading. You probably won't finish it all in one sitting; it takes quite a bit of concentration to keep referring back to the numbers and tables and absorb all the examples. At times, there are enough of those to make this feels like a college textbook -- one that's been forced into novel-like format. Still, the guy writes with pretty good clarity. I had already taken basic accounting in college and didn't like it -- possibly because of my professor -- so I picked up this book to give the subject a second chance. Having finished, I'm now grateful at this book for confirming my suspicion: accounting really is dry, boring material, regardless of the quality of its presentation.

I consistently buy this book to distribute to participants in my company's credit training seminars. I have used the previous edition and this newest edition, both of which are very informative and easy to read. To the author... Great Job!

Though rudimentary, this book filled some gaps for me left by more advanced texts, including some definitions that I was fuzzy on, and enlightened me as to why some things are on financial statements in the form they're in, since I don't have a business education background.The CD contains the text, which is handy on a laptop, but marred by having the text superimposed on a busy patterned background that has some kind of periodic highlights that are particularly annoying (the current generation of magazine, book and web site designers can't seem to grasp that the point of text is to be read, and that stuff that looks nifty on the computer screen may be darn near impossible to read in print; busy photo backgrounds, light text on dark backgrounds etc. belong ONLY in ads, where no one is expected to read the text anyway.)Also, the spreadsheets would have been more useful if incorporated in groups into workbooks instead of individual ones. You can't readily get numbers from one to another. And the disk titles are of the "sheet23.xls" variety, not helpful for finding the one you want, so you have to either have the book listing handy or access them strictly from the CD PDF file text.Being used to technical book web sites that contain errata, new material, suggestions from users, etc., I was disappointed to find nothing new there. And the list of web links, as usual in this fast-changing world, contains a number of missing links. I would have appreciated a good old fashioned bibliography in addition to the links, because you can usually find out of print books through a library, used dealers on the web, and most really important books and texts have current editions.

I am the author. I would like to point out that the reviews that appear here, which are dated prior to May 2002, are for the previous edition. In this new Third Edition, I have worked hard to take this top-selling, clearly written book, and add content in many areas to provide more depth to the book. There are six new chapters covering tax concepts, capital structure, business plans, working capital and banking relationshsips, accountability and control, and personal finances. In addition many other chapters have been siginficantly modified and or supplemented with new information. I hope you enjoy my book.

As a physician health care executive in a large integrated system, there was very little that I had learned in med school on finance and accounting. Dr. Finkler's book was direct, easy to understand, a quick read, and laced with humor. It is a must read for new physician managers!