Logo-UnderstandAccounting

Introduction

Just What is Financial Accounting?

Just what is financial accounting? The aim of accounting is to provide useful and reliable information about businesses and non-profits. Financial accounting seeks to determine a firm’s economic performance and its condition. Did it make a profit or loss last year?

Assets and Liabilities

What assets and liabilities did the business have at the end of the year? Non-profit accounting asks the same questions but with a few important twists. With these organizations we are less interested in the question of profit and loss and more interested in evaluating how resources were used. How much was spent on support and fund raising compared with expenses more directly related to a non-profits mission? ... Read more

Branches of Accounting

None of the different branches of accounting are rocket science. In fact, contrary to popular belief, accounting is not a very precise science at all. Even absent fraudulent manipulation accounting reports provide us with only approximations about economic performance and condition. How close these approximations are to reality varies greatly from business to business.

Non-Profit Accounting

Financial and non-profit accounting mainly looks backward. It addresses past economic performance and condition. In contrast to this, management or cost accounting is forward looking. Here we analyze historical information to find cost and revenue patterns that allow managers to make better operating decisions in the future.

All in Website

This web site will briefly describe the main rules and procedures used in the major branches of accounting. More importantly this site will help the business owner, non-profit manager, student or business adviser learn to evaluate the reliability and usefulness of accounting information. Sometimes accounting information... Read more

Lectures on Financial Accounting

Why Accounting is Not an Exact Science

Using Percentage Conversions

Distinguishing Profit from Owner Compensation

Liquidity and Ratio Analysis

Goodwill and Liquidating Value

Financial Statement Preparation

The Accounting Cycle

Inventory and Costs of Goods Sold

Fixed Assets and Depreciation

Prepaid Expenses and Deferred Revenue

Accounts Payable and Wage Withholding

Accounts Receivable

Bases of Accounting

Analyzing Transactions

Debits and Credits

Revenue and Expenses

The Fundamental Accounting Equation

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles

Internal Controls and the Reliability of Financial Statements

View All

Get the job
you want!

Practice Now

Learn Accounting for Free

Just what is financial accounting? The aim of accounting is to provide useful and reliable information about businesses and non-profits. Financial accounting seeks to determine a firm’s economic performance and its condition. Did it make a profit or loss last year?

Financial Accounting

Financial Accounting

Understand financial accounting, Debits and credits. Balance sheets and income statements. Accrual vs. Cash Basis accounting.

Non-Profit Accounting

Non-Profit Accounting

Only some of the basic elements of financial accounting apply to Non-Profits.

Cost Accounting

Cost Accounting

Cost accounting is primarily concerned with capturing information that helps owners and managers operate their businesses more efficiently and profitably.

Business Appraisal

Business Appraisal

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout.

Time Value of Money

Time Value of Money

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout.

Advanced Accounting

Advanced Accounting

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout.

Reader Reviews

Sara Clarenbach,Attorney
Read More
Financial Accounting: A Mercifully Brief Introduction is an informative and well-written primer on a range of important concepts necessary to “get a handle on” the financial basics that small business owners and allied professionals frequently confront. The author successfully employs humor in developing scenarios, examples, and explanations which remain in the reader’s mind and make these oftentimes abstruse subjects understandable. The Summaries, Exercises and Problems sections of the book are particularly effective teaching tools. I found the most interesting and useful Chapters to be Chapter One (Introduction: Difficult Measurement Problems), Chapter 7 (Fixed Assets and Depreciation Methods), and particularly Chapter 10 (Financial Statement Reliability), for its treatment of embezzlement prevention and related issues. I have practiced law for almost 33 years, and have represented many small businesses during that time. I am pleased to have encountered this book, which I will highly recommend as a very helpful tool for business owners and others in understanding, approaching and evaluating accounting issues.
Dr. Diane L. Boone,University of Maine, Augusta
Read More
An easy to read, enjoyable guide to the basic principles that underpin accounting systems in businesses. Particularly useful in an educational setting as a supplementary reading to a technical textbook. However, also has a market for small business owners wanting to get to grips with the basics of how to get the most from their accounting function.
John Nessell,President Restaurant Resource Group, Inc.
Read More
Financial Accounting is generally thought of as a very precise science. This 126 page book seeks to dispel the myth. In his own words, author Michael Sack Elmaleh has managed to erase the ill effects of nearly 30 years of formal accounting education and teaching. Michael has written an engaging and thoroughly readable overview of the accounting process so that you can actually understand it! The book is written primarily for small business owners and advisors to small business. He demonstrates how accounting information is organized and collected, and how the information contained in financial statements both informs and misinforms statement users. Since important management and investment decisions are often based on these statements it’s vital that small business owners gain a better understanding of what this information means and its inherent limitations.
M. Equinox EA
Read More
This is a great book for small businesses. I’ve started recommending it to my clients who are doing their own bookkeeping (and all you professionals know what a nightmare that is!) and to bookkeepers who find themselves doing balance sheet accounting without a good background in the real story of debits and credits. This book covers the basics in an accessible, jargon-less prose yet still covers the essential points. I’m suggesting that this be a reference book my clients keep in their offices. That way they have a quick reference guide for themselves or their employees. Hopefully, when they go through 3 bookkeepers in a year the learning curve will be less steep than usual for the new employees, and I’ll get fewer “just a quick question” phone calls during tax season.
Daniel J. Guilfoil
Read More
It is refreshing to read an accounting text with a liberal arts background. This author challenges you to think about what is useful to accounting but also its abuses. Good introduction for the curious reader.
Robert Walter AEI
Read More
This book is an essential primer for small business owners who started their enterprise based upon their technical or creative skills – but now need to understand the basic terminology and ‘physiology’ of financial accounting in greater detail.

It is written in a very free flowing style and is as unthreatening an accounting text as I have encountered. The real life examples and Marxist humor (Groucho – not Karl) help make it that much more accessible. My favorite quote from the book, “Accounting can be accrual mistress.” (These are the jokes folks.)
Harold McFarland
Read More
For the person who has no knowledge of accounting and wants to understand the very basics this book is indeed a good brief introduction. The author makes a good point of the fact that most introductory accounting texts spend a great deal of time covering the basics of transaction entry. In today’s marketplace the software packages take care of these details of ensuring double entry occurs and the entries balance. When that information is removed you end up with the very basics of accounting including the basic accounting equation, cash and accrual accounting, receivables and payables, fixed assets, inventory, and financial statements. Explained at a level that a reader with no previous knowledge of accounting can follow the author does provide a mercifully brief introduction that is only the basics needed for everyday work.

Sitemap

Courses

Services

Subscibe to Newsletter

Subscribe to our email and get updates right in your inbox

Get Courses and Books From:

Copyright Epiphany Communications and Michael Sack Elmaleh 2006-2020

➤