Financial

Financial Accounting: Tools for Business Decision Making

Now in its Fourth Edition, Kimmel, Weygandt, and Kieso's Financial Accounting: Tools for Business Decision Making has been tested and approved in the classroom. Whether you measure classroom success by improved grades, students who are better prepared for the Intermediate course and their future careers, or by student evaluations at the end of the semester, Financial Accounting delivers real results.

"If you are teaching a debit/credit centered financial accounting principles class there is not a better written or organized text. Believe me I have looked. The supporting materials for instructors [are] also terrific."
--Nancy Snow, University of Toledo

"The textbook is well written with good examples and homework problems. This book is easy to understand, but is rigorous in its coverage of accounting issues."
--Paul Brazina, La Salle University, Philadelphia

"Best presentation of material in the industry. In addition, Financial, Managerial and Intermediate all flow together for greater coverage and comprehension."
--Vince Enslein, Clinton Community College

Key Features
* WileyPLUS gives instructors the technology they need to create an environment where students can reach their full potential and experience academic success. www.wiley.com/college/wileyplus
* New Accounting Across the Organization features place accounting issues within the context of students' majors.
* Updated with expanded content on Sarbanes-Oxley and Corporate Governance.
* New Comprehensive Problems combine concepts across chapters.
* A new Continuing Cookie Chronicle problem traces the growth of an entrepreneurial venture and enables students to apply their newly acquired accounting skills.
* Identifies the tools students will need to make real business decisions.
* Provides balanced coverage of the accounting cycle at a level that is appropriate to what students need in the business world.
* Emphasizes the accounting experiences of real high-profile companies, such as Tootsie Roll, Microsoft, Nike, and Intel.

Reading Financial Reports For Dummies

The U.S. government began standardizing and regulating financial reporting in 1929 when the stock market crash made it painfully clear that businesses often made absurd claims and that investors were either gullible, unable to verify information, or both. Now, financial reports are used by a company’s management to measure profitability (or lack of it), optimize operations and guide the company, by banks and other lenders to gauge the company’s financial health, and by institutional or individual investors interested in purchasing stock.

Unless you’re financially savvy, annual reports with all those figures, frustrating footnotes, and fine print are boring and intimidating. However, once you have a fundamental knowledge of finance and its basic terminology, you can find the juicy parts. Reading Financial Reports For Dummies by Lita Epstein, a teacher of online financial courses and author of Trading for Dummies, gets you up to speed so you can:

• Go past the prose that can maximize the positive and minimize the negative and get information in dollars and cents
• Get an overview from the big three—the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows
• Understand the lingo and read between the lines
• Calculate basics like PE, Dividend Payout Ratio, ROS, ROA, ROE, Operating Margin, and Net Margin

It pays for investors to be somewhat skeptical instead of gullible. Pressured to please Wall Street, companies are sometimes tempted to use “creative” accounting. You’ll discover how to:

• Detect red flags (that, unfortunately, aren’t emphasized in red) such as lawsuits, changes in accounting methods, and obligations to retirees and future retirees
• Understand the different reporting requirements for public companies and private companies with various types of business structures
• Analyze a company’s cash flow, a prime indicator of its financial health
• Scrutinize deals such as mergers, acquisitions, liquidations and other major changes in key assets

Organized so you can start where you’re comfortable and proceed at your own pace, Reading Financial Reports for Dummies helps managers prepare annual reports and use financial reporting to budget more efficiently and helps investors base their decisions on knowledge instead of hype. Whether you’re in business or in the stock market, knowledge is always an asset.

Quicken 2008: The Missing Manual

Quicken is one of the many convenient ways to keep track of personal finances, but many people are unaware of Quicken's power and end up using only the basic features. And sometimes Quicken seems to raise more questions than it answers: Return of capital from stock? "Net worth"? What are they and why do you need to know about them? Luckily, Quicken 2008: The Missing Manual picks up where Quicken's help resources leave off. You'll find step-by-step instructions for using the most useful Quicken features, including those you may not have quite understood, let alone mastered, such as budgeting, recording investment transactions, archiving Quicken data files, and so on. You also learn why and when to use specific features, and which ones would be most useful in your situation. Quicken 2008: The Missing Manual helps you: Set up Quicken to take care of your specific needs. Follow your money from the moment you earn it. Make deposits, pay for expenses, track the things you own and how much you owe. Take care of financial tasks online, and quickly reconcile your accounts. Create and use budgets and track your investments. Generate reports to prepare your tax returns and evaluate your financial fitness. And a lot more. This book is designed to accommodate readers at every technical level. If you're a first-time Quicken user, special boxes with the title "Up To Speed" provide the introductory information you need to understand the topic at hand. For advanced users, there are similar boxes called "Power Users' Clinic" that offer more technical tips, tricks, and shortcuts for the experienced Quicken fan. For a topic as important as your personal finances, why trust anything else?

Financial Statements: A Step-By-Step Guide to Understanding and Creating Financial Reports

Finally, a resourceful and unique primer on financial statements that uses a creative and different approach to explain every kind of financial report a small business owner or manager needs to succeed. Through an unique visual approach, this book leads users to a clear understanding of how business scores are kept and how to interpret the results.From balance sheets, cash flow statements and income statements, learn how to understand the basic elements that will pave the way to achieving financial success.

The Interpretation of Financial Statements

"All investors, from beginners to old hands, should gain from the use of this guide, as I have."
From the Introduction by Michael F. Price, president, Franklin Mutual Advisors, Inc.

Benjamin Graham has been called the most important investment thinker of the twentieth century. As a master investor, pioneering stock analyst, and mentor to investment superstars, he has no peer.

The volume you hold in your hands is Graham's timeless guide to interpreting and understanding financial statements. It has long been out of print, but now joins Graham's other masterpieces, The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis, as the three priceless keys to understanding Graham and value investing.

The advice he offers in this book is as useful and prescient today as it was sixty years ago. As he writes in the preface, "if you have precise information as to a company's present financial position and its past earnings record, you are better equipped to gauge its future possibilities. And this is the essential function and value of security analysis."

Written just three years after his landmark Security Analysis, The Interpretation of Financial Statements gets to the heart of the master's ideas on value investing in astonishingly few pages. Readers will learn to analyze a company's balance sheets and income statements and arrive at a true understanding of its financial position and earnings record. Graham provides simple tests any reader can apply to determine the financial health and well-being of any company.

This volume is an exact text replica of the first edition of The Interpretation of Financial Statements, published by Harper & Brothers in 1937. Graham's original language has been restored, and readers can be assured that every idea and technique presented here appears exactly as Graham intended.

Highly practical and accessible, it is an essential guide for all business people--and makes the perfect companion volume to Graham's investment masterpiece The Intelligent Investor.

Financial Accounting: An Introduction to Concepts, Methods and Uses

Ideal for graduate, MBA, and higher-level undergraduate programs, FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING: AN INTRODUCTION TO CONCEPTS, METHODS, AND USES presents both the basic concepts underlying financial statements and the terminology and methods that allow you to interpret, analyze, and evaluate actual corporate financial statements.

Term Sheets & Valuations - A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Venture Capital Term Sheets & Valuations (Bigwig Briefs)

Term Sheets & Valuations is the first ever in-depth look at the nuts and buts of terms sheets and valuations. The book, written by leading venture capitalist Alexander Wilmerding of Boston Capital Ventures, covers topics such What is a Term Sheet, How to Examine a Term Sheet, A Section-by-Section View of a Term Sheet, Valuations, What Every Entrepreneur & Executive Needs to Know About Term Sheets, Valuation Parameters, and East Coast Versus West Coast Rules. In addition, the book includes an actual term sheet from a leading law firm with line by line descriptions of each clause, what can/should be negotiated, and the important points to pay attention to. A must have book for any executive, entrepreneur, or financial professional.

Praise for Term Sheets & Valuations:

"This primer should be required reading for every entrepreneur. It is short, authoritative and worth its weight in gold." - Murray Low, Executive Director, Columbia Business School, Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship

"An invaluable resource for executives and financial professionals." - Graham D.S. Anderson, General Partner, EuclidSR Partners

"A valuable resource for entrepreneurs..." - Jeffrey Donohue, Esq.

Term Sheets & Valuations is the first ever in-depth look at the nuts and buts of terms sheets and valuations. The book, written by leading venture capitalist Alexander Wilmerding of Boston Capital Ventures, covers topics such What is a Term Sheet, How to Examine a Term Sheet, A Section-by-Section View of a Term Sheet, Valuations, What Every Entrepreneur & Executive Needs to Know About Term Sheets, Valuation Parameters, and East Coast Versus West Coast Rules. In addition, the book includes an actual term sheet from a leading law firm with line by line descriptions of each clause, what can/should be negotiated, and the important points to pay attention to. A must have book for any executive, entrepreneur, or financial professional.

Questions Great Financial Advisors Ask... and Investors Need to Know

A financial advisor recounts an interview with a recently retired physician who planned an enjoyable—and costly—retirement. The doctor wanted his entire portfolio in bonds, which was far too conservative to maintain the lifestyle he and his wife had planned. In the advisor’s words:

""This fellow was a bit of a know-it-all, and I wasn’t getting through. Finally I asked him, 'Doctor, how will it feel for you when you have to go back to work?' That got his attention, and I was able to lay out a strategy that would allow him to retire and stay retired.""

In Questions Great Financial Advisors Ask…and Investors Need to Know, coauthors Alan Parisse and David Richman have compiled the questions great advisors ask that lead to the probing and personal conversations necessary to diagnose and understand clients'—and potential clients'—deep-seated feelings about money. That’s how great advisors help clients wring the emotion out of investing and set them on the rational road to achieving their financial goals.

Throughout this book are questions, suggestions, and stories from some of the world’s top financial advisors, including a chapter of ""great questions to ask"" organized by topic.

QuickBooks 2008: The Missing Manual

There have been many improvements to QuickBooks over the years, but the program's documentation is not one of them. Luckily, QuickBooks 2008: The Missing Manual picks up where QuickBook's help resources leave off. With this book, you don't just learn how to use the software, you learn why and when to use specific features. And you get basic accounting advice so that it all makes sense to you along the way. With its Simple Start, Basic, Pro, Premier, and industry-specific Enterprise editions, QuickBooks can handle many of the financial tasks companies face, but the price you pay is an overabundance of features. With this book, you get advice on which features you need to use to get your work done efficiently, along with step-by-step instructions on how to use them. QuickBooks 2008: The Missing Manual helps you: Get more out of QuickBooks whether you're a beginner or an old pro. Learn how QuickBooks can help you boost sales, control spending, and save on taxes. Set up and manage your files to fit your company's specific needs. Use QuickBooks reports to evaluate every aspect of your enterprise. Follow the money all the way from customer invoices to year-end tasks. Discover new tips and tricks on the best timesaving options for your business. Build budgets and plan for the future to make your business more successful. And a lot more. This book is designed to accommodate readers at every technical level. If you're a first-time QuickBooks user, special boxes with the title "Up To Speed" provide the introductory information you need to understand the topic at hand. For advanced users, there are similar boxes called "Power Users' Clinic" that offer more technical tips, tricks, and shortcuts forthe experienced QuickBooks fan. For a topic as complicated as accounting software, why trust anything else?

Financial Intelligence: A Manager's Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean

Companies expect managers to use financial data to allocate resources and run their departments. But many managers can’t read a balance sheet, wouldn’t recognize a liquidity ratio, and don’t know how to calculate return on investment. Worse, they don’t have any idea where the numbers come from or how reliable they really are.

In Financial Intelligence, Karen Berman and Joe Knight teach the basics of finance—but with a twist. Financial reporting, they argue, is as much art as science. Since nobody can quantify everything, accountants always rely on estimates, assumptions, and judgment calls. Savvy managers need to know how those sources of possible bias can affect the financials—and they need to know that sometimes the numbers can be challenged.

While providing the foundation for a deep understanding of the financial side of business, the book also arms managers with practical strategies for improving their companies’ performance—strategies such as “managing the balance sheet” that are well understood by financial professionals but rarely shared with their nonfinancial colleagues.

Accessible, jargon-free, and filled with entertaining stories of real companies, Financial Intelligence will help nonfinancial managers be smarter and more confident in their everyday work.