Customer Reviews

Intermediate Accounting, 12th Edition

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

My qualifications: BA in Business, BS is Accountancy, MBA finance, CPA, Corporate Controller and Financial Mananger. I've been buying and reviewing new editions of this text every few years for over 20 years now. Why? Becasue if accountancy is your profession you cannot afford not to be completely up to date. Things change. Even all you want to do is make a decent salary and vegetate somewhere, someone is trying to bury you and take your job (or your company). Count on it. It is about competiveness, survival, and prospering. When can you quit studying? Never.

This is the text to put you ahead. I have seen shorter, more simple, less comprehensive, and much cheaper texts. But do you want the competitive edge or not?

There are other non-book alternatives. If your're a CPA, you'll have to keep plugging along with the CPE programs forever (sigh), but they don't hack it in depth compared to this. Even the AICPA's Journal of Accountancy, though highly reccomended, and far more timely than any book, cannot cover the details adequately.

Or you could take a CPA exam review course like Becker's every so oftern. That will set you back a fortune and hundreds of hours of your life. But you will be completely up to the minute on most everything. How long you remember everything after finishing the review course is another question.

"A practicing CPA simply cannot know the answers to many practice questions as they arise but rather needs the ability to find such answers." (NASBA site) This is the one stop text to do it.

A couple pieces of advice. Don't take the text into the office unless you see it (or others like it) on partners' bookshelves. Keep it out in the car for lunch, afterwork, fake restroom breaks,last minute reviews before you go in, or whatever. Also, never ever take it into a client's site. It may sometimes seem like a good idea, but your manager will probably slap you around for it.

Any text is only good for a few years, then spring for a new edition. If you get this text, give yourself some time working through it on the parts that are new to you or give you the most trouble or worry at work. Then consider buying the study guide. It's not a substitute for the book but it can speed things up for you a lot.

If you think this is a lot of work or baloney, try weighing it against not getting a good raise or promotion. Best wishes and good look.

P.S. I'm on this page because I'm buying my latest copy.

This book is huge. Nearly 1500 pages of cramped text in small print make it hard to read and handle in the normal day-to-day use for classes. I usually make copies of the individual chapters for studying because of its impossible size. Without any doubt, this book is very comprehensive. It makes a great reference book with its vast coverage of topics and info.

However, I am using this book for three accounting classes. I have already used this for one class and I am currently doing the second class. I spent far more time than necessary completing the course requirements because of the very poor application as a text book. Most good accounting books have plenty of examples and also comprehensive problems at the end to clarify the concepts. Not so with this book. Comprehensive problem sets are absent and examples are minimal. Not very good if you try to understand accounting rules and concepts. The publisher's website has powerpoint slides for each chapter. I found those slides more useful and better organized than the textbook itself.

I give it 1 star as a text book and 4 stars as a reference book

I am using this book as a textbook for my accounting course this semester (fall, 2007).
After reading the first four chapters of the book, I found that it was very confusing to read. Particularly, the end-of-the chapter exercise questions are worse. P 4-3 (an exercise at the end of chapter) is one of the countless questions which are written carelessly. In a word, the book is extremely disappointing. I just wonder whether there is anyone else who can write an intermediate accounting textbook in such a clear way as Harrison and Horngren's Financial Accounting was written. Finally, I can't quite understand why instructors are using such a poor book as a textbook.

This book was written by three CPAs. It serves by far a greater lesson in the problems caused by owlish CPAs with the communication skills of a dim brick than it does with financial accounting.

The greatest issue with the book is a complete and total lack of logical assumptions in nearly all of the homework. Problems begin with statements such as "allowance for doubtful accounts has a balance at year end of $XXXX". What is the problem here? What balance does it have? A credit or a debit? Students should never be taught to simply 'assume' that it is one thing or another. This sort of problem is repeated ad nauseum, to the extent that any one person with basic reasoning skills will spend more time trying to understand the poorly organized information than they will learning financial accounting.

My absolute favorite with this is the discrepancy between valuating inventory systems using lifo/fifo/AC/etc; there's a question that states that a store keeps perpetual inventory records, and then EVERY SINGE valuation the problem asks for concerning ending inventory is computed in the answer as if it was periodic. This, after more painful graphs were printed up while the reader tried to understand how perpetual systems differed if they happened to use LIFO/FIFO/etc.

Where the information isn't terribly vague, it's terribly bad. There's a repetitive issue where the reader is presented with a graph to illustrate a concept and, as any normal human being is wont to do, will try to understand how the numbers are being worked. All to no avail. It isn't until they turn the page to discover that the explanation of the process was written after the explanation of the numbers. It's horribly counterintuitive.

As others have commented, it is easier by far to learn this from someone who happens to have five minutes to explain what the book needs thirty pages for. It's terribly organized and as clearly written as muddy water.

For professionals I can imagine that this book would be the most valuable tool there is. With respect to already being a CPA or other form of accountant, there are obviously things that do not need to be explained. In that regard I can understand why the authors would be held with such regard, but as a student it is exasperating at times to find errors I wouldn't expect from children.

If you're looking at this book, you're probably using it for a college class or as a reference guide. In either case, the aptly named "Survival Guide" offered by the same author is invaluable. The text is great, but the chapter exercises (and most real world problems) go far beyond the examples given in the book. Consider buying the study guide to go with this one.

I used both for 2 semesters of Intermediate Accounting, and I probably wouldn't have been able to pass the second-level class without the 2nd volume of the study guide. With it, I got the best grade in the class.

Each volume is well worth an extra $50 or so

Intermediate Accounting: Problem-Solving Survival Guide
Intermediate Accounting, Volume 2, Problem Solving Survival Guide

I've just started using this textbook, and I am impressed so far. I'm using it for an intermediate accounting class I'm taking

There is a wealth of information in here, and I'm looking forward to diving in further.

This book is necesary, although it is expensive. You will receive an overview of more accounting principles you ever thought could be fit in one book. Good luck remenbering all of them. Systematic and Rational...

You shouldn't have to hire a CPA to help you understand a textbook. The problems in the end of the chapters aren't helpful because they ask about stuff that you didn't even go over in the chapter.

I used a previous edition of this book to study for and pass the CPA exam on my first try back when it was a 2 day pencil and paper exam. This book has everything you need and helps to develope an excellent foundation of knowledge that will help any student who goes on to take a masters level advanced financial reporting class. To those who have rated it poorly, I have to admit that once upon a time I did not like the book. However, the problem was me and not the book. As with any book, it is not of value unless the user actualy takes time to thouroughly read each chapter.

I had two intermediate acc. classes at college that went by this book... one for the first half of the book, one for the second half. For those intimidated by the size, trust me it isn't that bad; probably 2/5 of the 1400 pages are for the after-chapter exercises and problems, which are, needless to say, integral to your understanding of accounting. The fact is, there simply isn't enough room in the text to cover all the situations/complexities (for instance in leases) tested by the problems/exercises, so this book definitely isn't complete without the solution manual. Yes, the chapters do seem looong (35 pg. average if I remember and positively DENSE with material, footnotes and all), but it is well written and a focused effort on your part should get you through each in a reasonable amount of time. They have also made available the updated pension chapter (pre-2008 versions are no longer valid) on their website, and for what most would say is the hardest material in the entire text, I thought they did a very good job (or it could be that the "old" pension accounting presented in my Financial Accounting book was just really confusing).