This seventh volume in the series covers a variety of topics in financial planning and forecasting.

Asking is more than a skill it's a lifestyle The Ask is your personal manual for building the best, most fulfilling personal and professional life possible. Crafting the perfect ask can fund your new business, support your favorite charity, and get more quality time with your significant other but it can do so much more than that. It can change your life. In learning how to ask for what you really want and deserve, you lose your fear of rejection and judgement. You create the greatest sense of self-worth that no one can give you, you give it to yourself when you ask. The critical moment is when you turn your skills inward and make the hardest asks, the ones you ask yourself. This book is designed to make you an Exceptional Asker, and in the process, give you the confidence and skills you need to achieve all your goals and realize your dreams. You'll learn how to prepare, what words to use, what to avoid, and how to follow up, and you'll purge the natural hesitancy that has been holding you back for so long. Asking is about empowerment. It shows the world that what you want matters. It defines who you are, where you're going, and who will be by your side. This book provides over 175 sample asks, with clear actionable steps to help you claim your space in relationships, at work, and in the world. * Rewrite your own rulebook and find empowerment in asking * Learn the simple five steps to craft the perfect ask * Discover the secret of the ask its two sentences and a question * Remove your Money Blockers and turn a bad ask into a win * Conquer the hardest asks you'll ever make the ones you ask yourself Mastering the art of the ask reconfigures your approach to life, and changes the way you tackle challenges and goals. The Ask gives you the skills and the mindset you need to accomplish anything you can dream.

Praise for "Enterprise Risk Management and COSO: " "A Guide for Directors, Executives, and Practitioners"

""Enterprise Risk Management and COSO" is a comprehensive reference book that presents core management of risk tools in a helpful and organized
way. If you are an internal auditor who is interested in risk management, exploring this book is one of the best ways to gain an understanding of enterprise risk management issues."
--"Naly de Carvalho," "FSA Times"

"This book represents a unique guide on how to manage many of the critical components that constitute an organization's corporate defense program."
--Sean Lyons, Corporate Defense Management (CDM) professional

"This book provides a comprehensive analysis of enterprise risk management and is invaluable to anyone working in the risk management arena. It provides excellent information regarding the COSO framework, control components, control environment, and quantitative risk assessment methodologies. It is a great piece of work."
--J. Richard Claywell, CPA, ABV, CVA, CM&AA, CFFA, CFD

"As digital information continues its exponential growth and more systems become interconnected, the demand and need for proper risk management will continue to increase. I found the book to be very informative, eye-opening, and very pragmatic with an approach to risk management that will not only add value to all boards who are maturing and growing this capability, but also will provide them with competitive advantage in this important area of focus."
--David Olivencia, President, Hispanic IT Executive Council

Optimally manage your company's risks, even in the worst of economic conditions.

There has never been a stronger need for sound risk management than now. Today's organizations are expected to manage a variety of risks that were unthinkable a decade ago. Insightful and compelling, "Enterprise Risk Management and COSO" reveals how to:

Successfully incorporate enterprise risk management into your organization's culture

Foster an environment that rewards open discussion of risks rather than concealment of them

Quantitatively model risks and effectiveness of internal controls

Best discern where risk management resources should be dedicated to minimize occurrence of risk-based events

Test predictive models through empirical data

Business of all sizes have a problem: How do you knowin real timewhether you are earning the profit you need to grow or even just stay in business? And which products or services are doing the heavy lifting in contributing to profit? Financial statements tell only part of the story. They are backward looking, for one thing, and they generally show results only in the aggregate. Worse, they never seem to reflect the hard work you're doing on a daily basis. As one manager said, If I'm adding 25% profit to every job, why am I getting barely 5% net profit at the end of the year? Improving Profit: Using Contribution Metricsto Boost the Bottom Line solves this dilemma. As this book shows, Contribution-Based Activity (CBA) measures focus on two key levers that are fundamental to the operation of any business: financial contribution and units of activity. Knowing how to use these levers gets your company off the treadmill and on your way to stellar profitability. And as the 21 case studies show, CBA is surprisingly easy to apply to businesses of all types and all sizes. What is financial contribution? Simply the amount above and beyond the cost of goods or materials sold that contributes to covering overhead and creating profit. As entrepreneur, business consultant, and professor Keith Cleland shows, few managers actually know the financial contribution their products and services make, nor how to amplify that contribution by incremental adjustments to one or both levers. As you'll learn, the financial tool Cleland created, TARI (Target Average Rate Index), provides insight into each product's value. You'll not only learn which products are contributing the most to the bottom line, but how to unlock the profit potential in run-of-the-mill products or services. Improving Profit will help you: Restore and boost profit levels for your entire operation Relate your daily efforts toa transaction'sactual profitability Focus on the two key performance indicators that can help you identify and solve problems affecting finance and productivity Help everyone in the companyfrom CEO to janitorunderstand how their activities help or hinder the company's fortunes Make effective financial decisions

If you've ever wondered why your results don't match your hard work, hopes, and dreams, read this book. As the case studies make clear, identifying and applying TARI results in a significantand often dramaticboost to the bottom-line. What you'll learn Readers will learn to: Improve the profitability of a job, product, service, or department Price products and services correctly Conserve cash and avoid financial crunches Win desirable quotes and tenders Identify and track productivity Who this book is for

This book is for business managers, directors, consultants, students, professors, CPAs, and business advisers of all types. Table of Contents Background to Contribution-Based Activity (CBA) Kitchen Utensil Manufacturer Taken to the Cleaners Printing Business Multiplies Net Profit by 500% Furniture Manufacturer Climbs Out of the Red Contractor Overcomes Competition to Make a Profit Horticultural Equipment Proprietor's Moment of Truth Wholesaler Nets $2.5M in 10+ Months Jeweler's Changed Focus Turns Red into Black Upmarket Cafe Learns How to Stay on Track Diesel Repair Shop Rescued from Sand-Up- Hill Country Garment Maker Multiplies Net Profit by 700% Switchboard Manufacturer Climbs into the Black Baker Identifies W here the Rubber Meets the Road Architectural Practice Eradicates a Malignant Cancer Accounting Firm Wins by Losing a Third of Its Fees Legal Firm Transfers Productivity to the Bottom Line Contractor Increases Strike Rate to 1 in 4 Hot Bread Baker Discovers More to Bread than Flour Window Manufacturer's Flawed Foundation Multi-Home Contractor Discovers a New Way Home Award-Winning Hairdressing Salon Cuts Its Way Out of Bankruptcy Multi-Department Store Whitewashes the Past 14 Businesses Explore CBA/TARI Questions Answered Fast-Track Problem Resolution Guide Definition of Terms The Business Wheel Epilogue: Why Contribution Metrics?

This volume covers such topics as prior evidence on corporate annual reports, research methodology and the demographics of the corporate shareholder, investors' investment objectives and their information sources, and the readership and usefulness of corporate financial statements.

The Handbook is a virtual encyclopedia of public financial management, written by topmost experts, many with a background in the IMF and World Bank. It provides the first comprehensive guide to the subject that has been published in more than ten years. The book is aimed at a broad audience of academics/students, government officials, development agencies and practitioners. It covers both bread-and-butter topics such as the macroeconomic and legal framework for budgeting, budget preparation and execution, procurement, accounting, reporting, audit and oversight, as well as specialist subjects such as government payroll systems, local government finance, fiscal transparency, the management of fiscal risks, sovereign wealth funds, the management of state-owned enterprises, and political economy aspects of budgeting. The book sets out numerous examples and case studies describing good practice in public financial management, and is highly relevant for use in both advanced and developing countries.

Service firms have high overhead costs which are difficult to assign to individual services. To bring transparency to their value chain, they need costing approaches that help them find their own improvements. Markus B. Baum explores current theory and practice of value chain approaches and cost accounting to develop a costing approach with a suitable instrument for the allocation of fixed and overhead costs for a service firm. He describes the service business costing (SBC) approach. This hybrid-costing model has a hierarchical structure in terms of consolidation and allocates cost and revenues on the lowest hierarchical level possible to ensure that all costs and income are assigned to activities from which they originated."

The recent turmoil on financial markets has made evident the importance of efficient liquidity risk management for the stability of banks. The measurement and management of liquidity risk must take into account economic factors such as the impact area, the timeframe of the analysis, the origin and the economic scenario in which the risk becomes manifest. Basel III, among other things, has introduced harmonized international minimum requirements and has developed global liquidity standards and supervisory monitoring procedures. The short book analyses the economic impact of the new regulation on profitability, on assets composition and business mix, on liabilities structure and replacement effects on banking and financial products.

Banks take very large risks by consistently herding in the same perilous directions while believing they are safe and unique. This book presents a risk management framework to understand conformity and deviance within investment banks and other large organizations. It suggests that some groups understand the dynamics of this conformity to their advantage. This requires a deeper understanding of the risk in risk management. Fraudsters can game the system to their advantage legally and illegally; therefore risk managers must understand the interplay of multiple logics in order to govern and manage risk. Featuring short illustrative cases of massive risk mismanagement, this book walks the reader through four risk management perspectives (economic, institutional, evolutionary and contrarian) that explain why and how economic rationality is overridden by social forces. By understanding conformity and deviance, groups within organizations will be better equipped to manage risk and go against the tides of conformity to their advantage.

Written by two leading experts, this is a compact guide to the key tools and methods necessary to carry out cost-benefit analysis (CBA). The authors use modern economic tools to obtain general equilibrium cost-benefit rules that can be used to evaluate small projects, as well as large and even mega projects. Intertemporal issues like discounting, the shadow price of capital, and the treatment of risk are covered, and a state-of-the-art summary of available methods for the valuation of unpriced commodities is also included. In addition, the book provides detailed expositions of the marginal cost of public goods (MCPF), the marginal excess burden of taxes (MEB), and second-best evaluation rules, and shows how these concepts are interrelated. The importance of undertaking due diligence in evaluations is highlighted. This is an excellent toolkit for graduate students learning about the principles of CBA, and is a useful guide for government officials and policymakers.

This second volume in the series discusses such topics as management accounting's role in improving corporate performance, strategic cost management perspectives and accountability and knowledge workers.

This text focuses on CONTROLLING FOODSERVICE COSTS topics. It includes essential content plus learning activities, case studies, professional profiles, research topics and more that support course objectives. The text and exam are part of the ManageFirst Program (R) from the National Restaurant Association (NRA). This edition is created to teach restaurant and hospitality students the core competencies of the Ten Pillars of Restaurant Management. The Ten Pillars of Restaurant Management is a job task analysis created with the input and validation of the industry that clearly indicates what a restaurant management professional must know in order to effectively and efficiently run a safe and profitable operation. The ManageFirst Program training program is based on a set of competencies defined by the restaurant, hospitality and foodservice industry as those needed for success. This competency-based program features 10 topics each with a textbook, online exam prep for students, instructor resources, a certification exam, certificate, and credential. The online exam prep for students is available with each textbook and includes helpful learning modules on test-taking strategies, practice tests for every chapter, a comprehensive cumulative practice test, and more! This textbook includes an exam answer sheet to be used with the paper-and-pencil version of the ManageFirst certification exam.

How much risk should we take? A Short Guide to Risk Appetite sets out to help all those who need to decide how much risk can be taken in a particular risky and important situation. David Hillson and Ruth Murray-Webster introduce the RARA Model to explain the complementary and central roles of Risk Appetite and Risk Attitude, and along the way they show how other risk-related concepts fit in. Risk thresholds are the external expression of inherent risk appetite, and the challenge is how to set the right thresholds. By progressively deconstructing the RARA Model, the authors show that the essential control step is our ability to choose an appropriate risk attitude. The book contains practical guidance to setting risk thresholds that take proper account of the influences of organisational risk culture and the individual risk preferences of key stakeholders. Alongside this, individuals and organisations need to choose the risk attitude that will optimise their chances of achieving the desired objectives.

Praise for GETTING RICH YOUR OWN WAY

"Save yourself ten years of hard work. Read Brian's powerful book and let him show you the shortcut to success. He'll show you the fastest way for you to get rich."
-Robert Allen
author, Multiple Streams of Income

"Millions of people start with nothing and become wealthy as the result of doing certain things in a certain way, over and over again. This book by Brian Tracy shows you how you can achieve all your financial goals, starting from wherever you are today."
-Jack Canfield
coauthor, Chicken Soup for the Soul(R): Living Your Dreams and The Power of Focus

"This is the only book you need to read to become wealthy! It is loaded with practical ideas and strategies to propel you onwards and upwards."
-Nido Qubein
Chairman, Great Harvest Bread Company
founder, National Speakers Association Foundation

"Another great book from Brian Tracy. Tangible, practical ideas that will make you money and make you rich!"
-Bill Bachrach
President, Bachrach & Associates, Inc.

"Brian Tracy has put together a masterpiece of common sense for getting rich. If you wish a different life, commit now to different actions-read this book!"
-H. J. (Jim) Graham
President and CEO, Cyber Broadcast One, Inc.

"Brian Tracy shows you how unlimited wealth starts in the mind, and how anyone can focus their time and energy to earn millions. It's the readable, riveting primer for countless new American fortunes."
-Peter Montoya
CEO, Peter Montoya Inc.

McKinsey & Company's #1 best-selling guide to corporate valuation--the fully updated seventh edition Valuation has been the foremost resource for measuring company value for nearly three decades. Now in its seventh edition, this acclaimed volume continues to help financial professionals around the world gain a deep understanding of valuation and help their companies create, manage, and maximize economic value for their shareholders. This latest edition has been carefully revised and updated throughout, and includes new insights on topics such as digital, ESG (environmental, social and governance), and long-term investing, as well as fresh case studies. Clear, accessible chapters cover the fundamental principles of value creation, analyzing and forecasting performance, capital structure and dividends, valuing high-growth companies, and much more. The Financial Times calls the book "one of the practitioners' best guides to valuation." This book: Provides complete, detailed guidance on every crucial aspect of corporate valuation Explains the strategies, techniques, and nuances of valuation every manager needs to know Covers both core and advanced valuation techniques and management strategies Features/Includes a companion website that covers key issues in valuation, including videos, discussions of trending topics, and real-world valuation examples from the capital markets For over 90 years, McKinsey & Company has helped corporations and organizations make substantial and lasting improvements in their performance. Through seven editions and 30 years, Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies, has served as the definitive reference for finance professionals, including investment bankers, financial analysts, CFOs and corporate managers, venture capitalists, and students and instructors in all areas of finance.

Derived from the international literature on experiences with performance budgeting five elements which constitute performance budgeting as a comprehensive system can be identified in this book. This new definition is then applied to the German state level in order to investigate whether performance budgeting is effective in Germany, in detail, whether it actually leads to a reduction of public expenditure. With a survey in the state Ministries of Finance and an individually constructed panel dataset, the impact of the German performance budgeting reforms on their major aim, the enhancement of fiscal discipline, is empirically analyzed. The main result is that the potential of expenditure savings is prolonged by the enormous investments in the beginning.

Advanced praise for Transfer Pricing Methods

"Feinschreiber and a team of renowned executives have provided the definitive transfer-pricing guide to this challenging area. At a time when many companies are reviewing documents, policies, and procedures, it's wonderful to have a concise, clearly written reference focused on what may be the most critical corporate tax issue."
-Charles R. Goulding, Managing Director, Tax
Cooper Industries, Inc.

"It is refreshing to find a treatise on transfer pricing that combines practical business considerations, economic theory, and a discussion of technical tax rules in a way that is meaningful not only for large corporate enterprises but also small and medium-sized businesses."
-Vikram A. Gosain, JD, CPA, Director of Transfer Pricing
General Electric Capital Corporation

"This well-written book will be useful both to attorneys new to the practice area and to older hands. It includes very helpful discussions on valuation issues that will be particularly useful for in-house counsel and accountants."
-Joseph C. Mandarino, Partner
Troutman Sanders, LLP

"Feinschreiber and his contributors have cogently explained hundreds of useful facets in the transfer pricing field that have taken others volumes to articulate. The busy professional should consider this book in his or her quest for knowledge in the scintillating tax specialty."
-Charles L. Crowley, Partner
ITS/Customs and International Trade Practice, Ernst & Young, LLP

"Transfer Pricing Methods . . . should become a standard tool for every owner-managed and mid-cap multinational."
-Enrique MacGregor, Principal-in-Charge, Transfer Pricing Services
Grant Thornton LLP

"Bob's vast experience in transfer pricing matters has again been captured between the covers of a book. Thank you, Bob, and your contributing colleagues, for producing another valuable helpmate."
-Alan Getz, Vice President and General Manager, Tax
Mitsui & Co., Inc. (U.S.A.)

"Feinschreiber's current publication is a practical handbook that presents transfer pricing tools that can assist tax professionals of mid-sized companies to optimize profits, manage cash flows, and moderate taxes in a defensible manner."
-Per H. Hasenwinkle, National Practice Leader, Transfer Pricing
BDO Seidman, LLP

Put the principles of the market approach to valuing businesses to work!

This is an indispensable, hands-on workbook to help valuation experts (and those who want to be) better understand the application of methods used in the increasingly prevalent market approach to valuing businesses. With convincing evidence of value for both buyers and sellers, the market approach can end stalemates and get deals closed. Acclaimed for its empirical basis and objectivity, it's the model most favored by the IRS and the United States Tax Court--as long as it's properly implemented.

A companion to the definitive book on the topic, The Market Approach to Valuing Businesses, Second Edition, this workbook includes questions and exercises that bring the concepts to life. It parallels the book and helps readers understand the methodologies. It also provides practical experience in applying the relevant theories and formulas. Perfect for CPAs, appraisers, corporate development officers, intermediaries such as brokers and investment bankers, venture capitalists, and consultants, this workbook can also be the basis for dynamic in-house training programs.

The third book in the Healthcare Payment Systems series, Prospective Payment Systems examines the various types of prospective payment systems (PPS) used by healthcare providers and third-party payers. Emphasizing the basic elements of PPS, it considers the many variations of payment for hospital inpatient and outpatient services, skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, long-term hospital care, and rehabilitation facilities along with other providers. The book describes the anatomy of PPS, including cost reports, adjudication features and processes, relative weights, and payment processes. It outlines the features and documentation requirements for Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Groups (MS-DRGs), the Medicare Ambulatory Payment Classifications (APCs), Medicare HHPPS, Medicare Skilled Nursing Resource Utilization Groups (RUGs), and private third-party payers. Provides a framework for understanding and analyzing the characteristics of any PPS Discusses Medicare prospective payment systems and approaches Includes specific references to helpful resources, both online and in print Facilitates a clear understanding of the complexities related to PPS-covering specific topics at a high level and revisiting similar topics to reinforce understanding Complete with a detailed listing of the acronyms most- commonly used in healthcare coding, billing, and reimbursement, the book includes a series of case studies that illustrate key concepts. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges with PPS-including compliance and overpayment issues-to provide you with the real-world understanding needed to make sense of any PPS.

Business is the language of numbers--but not everyone in businesses understands how to read the myriad of financial statements that are necessary. Author Norb Schwarz provides readers with accessible information to understanding financial statements such as annual reports; cash flow statements; income statements; balance sheets and so much more. Filled with accessible information including definition and explanations--this book is essential for all family businesses members who don't have a firm handle on these essential skills.

Risk analytics is developing rapidly, and analysts in the field need material that is theoretically sound as well as practical and straightforward. A one-stop resource for quantitative risk analysis, Practical Spreadsheet Risk Modeling for Management dispenses with the use of complex mathematics, concentrating on how powerful techniques and methods can be used correctly within a spreadsheet-based environment. Highlights Covers important topics for modern risk analysis, such as frequency-severity modeling and modeling of expert opinion Keeps mathematics to a minimum while covering fairly advanced topics through the use of powerful software tools Contains an unusually diverse selection of topics, including explicit treatment of frequency-severity modeling, copulas, parameter and model uncertainty, volatility modeling in time series, Markov chains, Bayesian modeling, stochastic dominance, and extended treatment of modeling expert opinion End-of-chapter exercises span eight application areas illustrating the broad application of risk analysis tools with the use of data from real-world examples and case studies This book is written for anyone interested in conducting applied risk analysis in business, engineering, environmental planning, public policy, medicine, or virtually any field amenable to spreadsheet modeling. The authors provide practical case studies along with detailed instruction and illustration of the features of ModelRisk (R), the most advanced risk modeling spreadsheet software currently available. If you intend to use spreadsheets for decision-supporting analysis, rather than merely as placeholders for numbers, then this is the resource for you.

Imagine yourself in your new job, doing your best to make a good impression-and your boss asks you to do something that doesn't feel right, like fudge a sales report, or lie to a customer. You have no idea how to handle the situation, and your boss is hovering. When you're caught off guard, under pressure from someone more powerful, it's easy to make a mistake. And having made one, it's easier to rationalize the next one. The Young Professional's Survival Guide shows how to avoid these traps in the first place, and how to work through them if you can't avoid them. Many of the problems that arise in the workplace are predictable. C. K. Gunsalus, a nationally recognized expert on professional ethics, uses short, pungent real-world examples to help people new to the work world recognize the situations that can lead to career-damaging missteps-and prevent them. Gunsalus offers questions to ask yourself (and others) to help you recognize trouble and temptation, sample scripts to use to avoid being pressured into doing something you'll regret, and guidance in handling disputes fairly and diplomatically. Most of all, she emphasizes, choose your mentors for their characters as well as their titles and talents. You can't control the people around you, but you can control what you do. Reliance on a few key habits and a professional persona, Gunsalus shows, can help you advance with class, even in what looks like a "casual" workplace.

Praise for Competing for Capital

"An indispensable guide for investor relations and communication counselors alike. With more individual investors in the market than ever before, this book makes navigating the new regulatory playing field much more possible--and makes clear the path to victory."
--Michael W. Robinson
Director, Levick Strategic Communications; Former Director of Public Affairs and Policy, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); Director of Media Relations, NASD

"More than simply writing a textbook on IR, Bruce Marcus shares his wealth of experience and critical viewpoint with those seeking to understand a fast-changing profession."
--June Filingeri
President of Comm-Partners LLC, Investor Relations Consultant, and Educator

"Bruce Marcus puts some solid ground under the shifting landscape of being an investor relations professional. A must-read primer for public companies."
--Robert C. Roeper
Managing Director, VIMAC Ventures, LLC

"As the song lyrics go, 'everything old is new again, ' but this time with a vengeance. Disclosure has always been the touchstone of securities laws, but now more disclosure is required on a real-time basis with heightened accountability. Competing for Capital is a must-read for those in the securities industry, providing insights into securities markets, the information age and technology, and their impact on the job of investor relations professionals. Investors come in all shapes and sizes from around the globe, and investor relations personnel have their work cut out for them to provide clear, comprehensible, and comprehensive information, accessible to the novice and sophisticate alike. Competingfor Capital shows them the way."
--Donna L. Brooks, Esq.
Partner, Shipman & Goodwin, LLP

"Competing for Capital puts our recent turbulent financial marketplace in context, provides solid information for both new and experienced investor relations practitioners, and offers insights into the future of IR--all in Bruce Marcus's easy-reading style."
--Dixie Watterson
IR consultant, Communica Partners

"Competing for Capital aptly illustrates how investor relations has become a major corporate responsibility in generating trust, and how the profession must realize now more than ever that the needs of investors have changed because of technology, regulation, and globalization."
--Mark Kollar
Managing Director, Cubitt Jacobs & Prosek

Catastrophic risk is one of the most significant and challenging areas of corporate risk management. Analyze this risk for your company with Catastrophic Risk and make sure you have sufficient resources to absorb losses and avoid financial distress.

The first comprehensive volume to address this topic from a financial perspective, this book is a guide to the worst financial risks threatening companies and industries today. Author Eric Banks begins with a consideration of ?catastrophe? and its mplications, looks at the state of actuarial and financial modelling of catastrophe risks, and discusses the creation of a risk management framework that will enable the efficient and secure management of exposure. Catastrophic Risk is essential reading if you're a corporate treasurer, CFO, or insurance/financial risk manager responsible for corporate risk management. Order your copy today.