Customer Reviews

Financial Accounting, Tools For Business Decision Making

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Potential Buyers,

If you are a student who is taking an accounting course and your instructor requires you to use the accompanying Wiley Plus website, do not expect to get a Wiley Plus, registration code with this product.

I purchased the text "new" directly from Amazon for an accounting class I am taking and I assumed that I would recieve the registration code I needed; I assumed wrong as there was no registration code included with my book.

If you do need the code for class and you do choose to buy this book from Amazon, you'll be best off buying the cheapest, used edition and going to the Wiley Plus site directly to get a standard registration code for around $60 dollars. Of Course keep in mind shipping costs may eat up any savings you'd get buying from Amazon in the first place!

The 1 star review actually reflects my dissatisfaction with the description of this product on Amazon's site, and not the quality of the text.

Happy Shopping!

We used this book in my accounting class. The coverage jumped around a too much for my taste. Also, not having an accounting background, the constant language changes (with no cross references and very superficial glossary), especially between the chapter text and the exercises made the endeavor excruciating. The worst part was not being able to check answers. The answer key should come with the book. Not having an answer key invalidates this books use as a learning tool even if it were better written.

If you are new to accounting then this book should definitely be on your list. Explaining step by step how to record basic journal entries and how these entries relate to the various financial statements (Income Statement, Cash-Flows...), in a clear and well organized fashion. The only reason I am unwilling to rate this book five stars is due to the price; as most people will be using this book as an introduction to financial accounting it does seem a little expensive. It is also worth noting the problems and examples used throughout the book are of excellent quality, especially the financial statements provided in appendix A and B. If you have previous experience within the accounting field I would probably recommend a book at a higher level but beginners could do no better.

This book is terrible! It gives different definitions for the same term several times in the first few chapters. Why doesn't it just give one coherent, comprehensive definition for each word?!! The concepts are broken up and presented helter-skelter, so reading this book is like working a tedious jigsaw puzzle. Then it includes lots of problems at the end of each chapter, but there is no answer key, and the Solutions Manual is only available to teachers. Do they think that my professor is too lazy or too stupid to make up his own tests? (Hint to oblivious writers/editors: a textbook is useless if students cannot practice working problems and check the answers on their own. This is not third grade, and my professor is not a babysitter!) I bought the workbook (which contains practice tests) separately, but I still don't have the answers to the problems at the end of the chapters. I will speak to the department heads at my college and beg them to switch publishers next semester.

Using this book as a required text for a brush up/seminar course for an MBA program, I've found this book did not do enough reviewing for me with regards to creating financial reports-- income statement, statement of cash flows, balance sheet, etc. I had managerial accounting, financial accounting and financial management in undergrad, however, this book still lacks the concrete basics of "what goes where on a financial report and why". Speaking to my undergrad accounting department chair, I found my opinion agreed with her's-- Kimmel is verbose and lacks clarity/simplicity for those without an accounting focus or background.

I found the definitions to be vague, and even the definitions of terms change as you go through the chapter, which is confusing, when you're trying to retain all this new information. The author should provide a list of examples of terms, so that we understand and grasp what the meanings of terms are, and how they are linked to other definitions.

For example, a cash flow from investing actitivites are defined as "cash flows related to the acquisition or sale of the company's productive assests". As you do some homework prolems and online quizzes, you can gather that productive assests are more than manufacturing equipment, which was the one example given in the book. If I don't know what productive assets are, then I'm not going to understand what cash flow from investing activities are.

Also, why not provide an answer key so that you can check to see if you're doing the work correctly and that you have the right understanding? The answer key should not be just for teachers.

This was a required text for my accounting class. Let's just say, if you're not familiar with accounting, or not fond of it, this text will make you hate it even more! Be careful because I somehow received the loose leaf edition of it and had to place it in my own binder...

There is no glossary in the back of the book, so if you need to look up a term or vocab word you are out of luck.
Each chapter has a glossary at the end, but there's 14 chapters so if you need to look up a word, you are out of luck because it could be under any of the 14 chapters.

There is also not nearly enough information in the book to even BEGIN to answer any of the questions, exercises, or problems. The book also contains absolutely no answers, so you have no idea where to even start. It is impossible to learn anything with this book. Big thumbs DOWN

Anything priced over $60 for a used version is a RIPOFF. These do NOT include a WileyPlus registration and you will end up spending another $80 on a registration code.

I was led to believe that this item came with an access code for the publisher's Wileyplus online tools because this was mentioned in the "Key Features" segment of the product description. But to my dissatisfaction it was not. I was forced to purchase the access code separately from the publisher's website for about $68. I only saved $2 by purchasing this text through Amazon.com and this is only because I purchased with free shipping. Moreover, it was not worth the hassle...in the future I will purchase from the school's bookstore, get everything I need in one stop, and know I've purchased the right materials.