Schaum's Quick Guide to Business Formulas: 201 Decision-Making Tools for Business, Finance, and Accounting Students [Paperback]

Joel G. Siegel (Author), Jae K. Shim (Author), Stephen W. Hartman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0070580316 | ISBN-13: 978-0070580312 | Publication Date: November 1, 1997 | Edition: 1

For quick and authoritative answers to questions on business and financial formulas and tools, this unique book is unequaled! It not only clearly explains all major business and financial formulas, it shows you how to apply them, step by step. Perfect for college and graduate students in business, finance, marketing, operations, management, and accounting, this comprehensive, portable guide gives you quick access to all major financial and business formulas with explanations you can grasp and use in seconds. You get explanations, examples, and demonstrations of formulas for vertical analysis; net-cost method; sales mix analysis; regression statistics; profit margin; sampling formulas; discount cash flow analysis; weighted averages; cost of capital; earnings per share; inventory turnover; and nearly 200 more. This is the handiest tool available for mastering business formulas!

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Business and finance answers in a flash!

Quick business and finance answers at your fingertips--that's what this unique book gives you! It has 201 major formulas with quick, clear explanations that you can grasp and put to use in seconds. Perfect for college and graduate students in business, finance, marketing, operations, management, and accounting, this comprehensive, portable quick reference lets you speedily review formulas in your current courses, and get ahead of the curve in coursework to come. It's such a handy source for fast, complete, and reliable problem-solving that many business people keep it on their desktops!

Schaum's Quick Guide to Business Formulas gets you right to the formula you need, explains it simply, and demonstrates it step by step. You get instant answers on

• Vertical analysis
• Security valuation
• Cost-volume-profit relationships
• Sales mix analysis
• Regression statistics
• Profit margin
• Sampling formulas
• Beta and alpha
• Cost of capital
• Earnings per share
• Residual income
• Equity ratios
• Inventory turnover
• Chi-square test
• Linear programming
• Trend analysis
• Discount cash flow analysis
• And many, many more

If you don't have a lot of time but want to excel in class, this book helps you: brush up before tests, locate formulas fast, research quickly and more effectively, and get the right answers without spending hours poring over lengthy texts.

About the Author

Joel G. Siegel, Ph.D., CPA, is professor of finance and accounting at Queens College, New York City. Jae K. Shim, Ph.D., is professor of finance and accounting at California State University, Long Beach. Stephen W. Hartman, Ph.D., is professor of management at New York Institute of Technology. Drs. Siegel and Shim also consult in finance, and Dr. Hartman is a management consultant.

Product Details

• Paperback: 354 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (November 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070580316
• ISBN-13: 978-0070580312
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just for students, May 27, 2002

By 

Linda Zarate "IT Ops Consultant" (Azusa, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Schaum's Quick Guide to Business Formulas: 201 Decision-Making Tools for Business, Finance, and Accounting Students (Paperback)

This is a reprint of "McGraw-Hill Pocket Guide to Business Finance: 201 Decision-Making Tools for Managers" with a single difference. The now out-or-print book came with a runtime version of MathCAD and formulas for using each of the tools, while this new version does not. Also, don't let the title fool you - this book is as useful to working professionals as it is to students.

The 201 tools contained in this small, highly useful book range from Acid Test (doing a quick ratio of financials) to Z-Scores. Each tool is listed alphabetically, its use explained, and instructions on how to use it is provided. What I particularly liked is the worked examples that accompany each tool.

As an IT consultant who specializes in service delivery this book is not one I would normally include in my professional library. I was introduced to it when a colleague and I were writing a white paper on recovery management. We were searching for a way to link business imperatives to justification for investment in recovery strategies. We found one piece of the puzzle in this book - the Altman Z-Score. This tool predicts whether or not a company is likely to enter into bankruptcy within one or two years. This led to the development of a copyrighted model that addressed survival level objectives, and also became a key part of the Tarrani-Zarate Information Technologies Management Model. All this from a single entry in a small book!

Aside from discovering a relatively obscure, but important, tool I also found other useful tools in this book. Because I am not a business consultant or financial expert the tools were like a cram course in financial management for non-financial people. For example, I was able to apply some of the tools to personal financial matters - the real costs of a loan become quickly apparent when you compute them. I was also able to employ some of the tools to conduct realistic cost/benefit analyses, examine trade-offs supporting approaches to projects, etc. In this respect this small book has significantly improved my professional skills and has inspired me to read other books on financial management.

I strongly recommend this book - collection of tools really - to anyone who deals with finance, anyone who has P&L responsibilities, and business and IT consultants. The latter group will find this book to be invaluable for developing proposals, deliverables and project plans that add value.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT!, January 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Schaum's Quick Guide to Business Formulas: 201 Decision-Making Tools for Business, Finance, and Accounting Students (Paperback)

This book saved me through four accounting courses three finance courses and two real estate courses. It is well organized and easy to locate any formula that is needed.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An OK reference book, May 3, 2009

By 

A. Bentley (Somewhere in the USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Schaum's Quick Guide to Business Formulas: 201 Decision-Making Tools for Business, Finance, and Accounting Students (Paperback)

I use a few books as reference books during my ratio analysis of a companies position, and this one is just a backup. It's got tons of formulas, but most of the ones included in THIS book, you NEVER need to use in an analysis of financial statements.

The book seriously lacks explanations of what the ratios and formulas mean. It just vaguely states at the end of each formula who might use it and why, but doesn't go into the detail you'd want. The book just doesn't sit right. If you want a good reference book for ratio analysis of financial statements, than get "Business Ratios and Formulas: A Comprehensive Guide" By Steven M. Bragg