Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Accounting, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I found this book to be somewhat difficult to use in learning the accounting skills that I need for my small business. I'm not good at accounting, but I am a decent programmer. I found that many subjects were just tossed at you, and not really explained all that well.

I had to really search to find the information that I wanted, and did find some useful information though.

If you are totally new to accounting, I reccomend "The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand". I learned a LOT from that book, and it presented the basic accounting ideas extremely well. That book was lacking in specific details that this book provides. This book provides MUCH more intermediate accounting knowledge, just in a format that I find difficult to learn and retain.

Overall, I'm glad that I purchased this book along with "The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand". This book has intermediate accounting detail that will serve as a reference book, while "the Lemonade Stand" really taught me the basics of accounting which I really needed.

I started a business a little over a year ago and needed to learn accounting. I have a degree in engineering but I've never had any accounting courses. I bought about 12 accounting books and none of them taught from the ground up and in a very understandable way. I was very discouraged because I was not making any progress until I got to this book. I would highly recommend it to anyone who does not have an accounting background that needs to learn it quickly from the ground up. Fantastic book. I highly recommend it.

This book has caused a major headache for me and my accountant (who was like WTF when I told him I was required by law to use Accrural in my situation); it states that Accrural method is REQUIRED for a wide array of businesses and situations.

IRS Revenue Procedure 2002-28 in Internal Revenue Bulletin 2002-18 (which came out 4 years before this book's publication date) -[...] - states that there is an exception in the case of "average annual gross receipts" of $10,000,000 or less that is not prohibited from using the cash method under § 448.

§ 448 - [...] - states that there is an exception for "(3) Entities with gross receipts of not more than $5,000,000"

I would guess that the majority audience of this book is probably small companies that don't take in five million dollars a year.

I have no idea what other misinformation this books has, but I feel like this is a major issue that could cause many businesses to make the wrong (or at least significantly harder to implement) choice, a choice which is hard / annoying to change later (IRS Form 3115).

For that reason I would recommend not buying the book, future versions, or any other books by these authors.

Chapter 1 and 2 are essential for anyone wanting to occupy a managerial level. Tax chapters were just flippers , but gave a lot of basic information for me, and helped me understand what the accountants said in the meetings.