The bestselling and astonishingly simple guide to the fundamental principles of accounting, written specifically for those without a financial background. Simple, easily absorbed and clearly explained, this book will guide you through all the major accounting concepts. You will learn how to master company accounts, understand balance sheets, profit and loss accounts and cash flow systems and how to analyse and monitor your company's financial performance.

Discover everything you need to know to take control of your accounts and manage the success of your business or personal finances. Brilliant Accounting is the practical, step-by-step guide that will help you get to grips with accounting basics. Written by an accounting expert with years of experience, Brilliant Accounting is free from technical jargon and theory and is packed with practical examples and expert tips and tricks. This book covers everything you need to know, from understanding reports to using accounting information to manage and develop your business.

Spending on M&A has, in aggregate, grown so fast that it has even overtaken capital expenditure on increasing and maintaining physical assets. Yet McKinsey, the leading management consultancy, reports that "Anyone who has researched merger success rates knows that roughly 70% fail". The idea that businesses might be using huge and increasing sums of shareholders' money for an activity that more often than not leads to failure calls into question the information on which M&A decisions are based. This book presents statistical studies, case material, and standard-setters' opinions on company accounting before, during, and after M&A. It documents the manipulation of annual accounts by acquirers ahead of share for share bids, biased forecasts of post-merger earnings by bidders, and devices to flatter earnings when recording the deal. It explores the challenges for standard-setters in regulating information flows during and after M&A, and for account-users wishing to learn from financial statements how a deal has affected performance. Drawing on a wide range of international examples, this readable book is targeted not just at accounting specialists but at anyone who is comfortable reading the serious financial press, is intrigued by what is going on in the massive M&A market, and is concerned with achieving better-informed M&A. As such it might be of particular interest to business executives, lawyers, bankers, and investors involved in M&A as well as graduate students interested in researching or learning about the role of accounting in M&A.

Starting with the first "scientific" economists such as Cantillon (1755) and Quesnay (1758) and ending with Piketty (2019), this book explores the treatment of the concept of capital in the history of accounting and economic thought. The work provides a rare juxtaposition of the reasoning, discourse and writings of accountants and economists. With regard to 'capital', this approach highlights the ongoing struggle between these "uncongenial twins" - as Kenneth Boulding put it - for primacy in analysing, and utilising, capitalism. But if they are certainly "uncongenial", the book also argues that it is wrong to ever classify these two disciplines as "twins" because they have taken very different paths ever since scientism came to dominate in economics and ethical and moral considerations were put to one side. This book will be of significant interest to readers to history of economic thought, critical accounting and heterodox economics.

This book describes the functions frequently used in deep neural networks. For this purpose, 37 activation functions are explained both mathematically and visually, and given with their LaTeX implementations due to their common use in scientific articles.

Let 50 World Class Speaking Coaches Show You How to Keep Your Audience on the Edge of Their Seats and Turn Your Presentations Into Profits. The World Class Speaking In Action 6-Part System provides you with real life examples and case studies on how to... * Craft an unforgettable message that hits home with your audience * Deliver your speech in a way that keeps your audience on the edge of their seats * Sell your message so your audience members take the exact next step you want them to take * Master leading-edge technologies and speak to thousands without even leaving home World Class Speaking In Action is a definitive guide for the professional speaking and coaching industry. Until now, public speaking books have covered either the art of public speaking or the business of public speaking. World Class Speaking In Action shows you how to master both. World Class Speaking is the one-stop-shop for building breakthrough presentations and turning them into bundles of profits!

Essential guidance on the new fair value rules for accounting managers, auditors, and fraud investigators

Fair Value accounting is emerging as the next prime opportunity for financial statement fraud. Explaining the many complex applications of fair value accounting in the preparation of financial statements, "Fair Value Accounting Fraud" offers timely guidance on an up-and-coming issue as U.S. and international accounting rules pertaining to the use of fair value accounting continue to change.

You'll find discussion of
U.S. GAAP and IFRS rules on fair value accounting issues, highlighting the areas most vulnerable to fraudExplanations of 75 categories of fair value accounting fraud schemesFraud risk checklist that you can put to immediate usePractical detection techniques useful for auditors, investigators and others who rely on financial statementsExpert advice from Gerard Zack, CFE, CPA, author of "Fraud and Abuse in Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Prevention and Detection"

Comparing US accounting standards to International Financial Reporting Standards-thereby making this book useful worldwide- "Fair Value Accounting Fraud" helps you understand the new rules and develop new auditing and investigative techniques to enable you to detect potential fraud.

This series arose out of the belief that the international accounting literature should devote more attention to the study of the accounting problems and issues of emerging economies (developing and newly industrialized countries).
Through an increasing awareness of the real issues and the accounting practices advocated in it, these works have become relevant to the actual needs of its readers, and is making real contributions to the accounting development process of emerging economies.
The volumes presented aim to:
*Raise the level of interest in the specific problems of accounting in emerging economies
*Increase awareness of real issues, so that accounting in these countries will not just be seen as a matter of copying what is done in the industrialized countries
*Provides an authoritative overview of the research and progress in this field

This volume describes the development of accounting thought during the twentieth century by focusing on a relatively narrow and long-lived issue, income smoothing.
The task begins with the creation and description of three taxonomies of income smoothing literature in order to identify the context and bounds of the preferences and behavior that are to be the subject of the study. Then a chronological review of English-language literature referring to income smoothing behavior is conducted that covers the period, 1893 through 1998. The review starts with literature discussing secret reserves created so that fat years could pay for lean years and moves to income smoothing as a criterion for accounting choice.
This literature on the smoothing criterion provided motivation for some of the earliest modern empirical studies in accounting. Empirical studies of smoothing have continued at a fairly constant rate since 1966 and make up a substantial portion of the literature review. A modification of the conventional smoothing hypothesis is proposed at the conclusion of the narrative that takes into account some relevant variables that tend to be overlooked because of the fragmentation of the literature. An extensive annotated bibliography and other appendices provide important supplements to the narrative.

This book, first published in 1988, studies the changes in selected annual corporate financial reporting practices in Canada from 1900 to 1970, and examines the background and processes that have influenced such changes. Knowledge of how financial reporting practices evolved and what influenced their evolution is key to understanding current financial reporting and in influencing further change.

This book, first published in 1988, analyses the history of auditing with as much objectivity as possible. These chapters reveal the importance of auditing in society generally and business activity particularly. The character of the auditor is examined, and their part in history as their role developed from an amateur status to a professional one. The development of the accounting profession is a significant part of the history of auditing. The emerging professional bodies assumed a societal role and by doing so, the audit function changed in terms of its aims and practices, and became a matter of public as well as private concern.

This book, first published in 1988, reassesses the data on Church - accountant, manager and industrial engineer - and stresses the theoretical impact of his ideas upon contemporary business structures as well as his practical desire to implement concepts to better the working man's day. The past impact of engineers and engineering concepts on accounting and management has previously been overlooked, and this book corrects this. The discussion herein may inspire a much-needed dialogue among engineers, accountants and managers.

This book, first published in 1771 and reissued in 1984, is a fascinating insight into the history of accounting. Written by a London accountant ('accomptant') in 1771, it examines the profession as it was in the eighteenth century. It looks at the system of book-keeping, the banking business, and double entry book-keeping for manufacturers.

This book, first published in 1984, reprints the important texts The General Principles of the Science of Accounts (1901) and The Accountancy of Investment (1904) in one single volume. Charles Sprague pioneered the development of accounting theory in the United States, and his work is key in the study of the history of accounting and its development.

This book, first published in 1989, contains reprints of the early periodical on accounting, The Book-Keeper. It dealt with 'historical reviews of methods and systems in all ages and by all nations. Elucidations of accounts, introducing new and simplified features of accounting. Problems from the counting-room discussed and explained. Instructive notes upon plans and methods of book-keeping in every department of trade, commerce and industry.' The journal is a primary source for students interested in the history of accounting.

This book, first published in 1984, marks the closing of a long and important chapter in the history of the accountancy profession. The Society of Incorporated Accountants was founded in 1885 and over its long history achieved much in the development of the profession. The book is concerned with the main policies of the Society, its leading personalities, its organisation, and the general will of its body of Members. It also focuses on economic and business affairs, legislation and constitutional development, as well as the relationship of different sections of the profession and developments in other countries.

This book, first published in 1986, collects together the papers presented at the Fifth International Congress on Accounting in 1938. Cutting edge research at the time, these analyses now form an integral part of the history of accounting.

This book, first published in 1988, is a readable, concise history of the accounting profession in the US from its beginnings to the late twentieth century. It examines the roots of the profession, how it developed, how its standards have evolved, and what social, economic and legal forces have shaped it. The chapters form a series of dramatic highlights, illustrative of the multifarious problems besetting a young profession, catapulted into prominence by the economic and social forces of the twentieth century.

This book, first published in 1984, is concerned mainly with papers published in various Transactions of the Chartered Accountants Students' Societies of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Many of these lectures were given by eminent accountants from throughout the UK, and soon the activities of the Societies extended beyond lectures. The financial reporting and auditing topics are the major concern of this text - they represent the one category of lectures which have a continuing and international relevance and interest.

This book, first published in 1986, examines extracts sections from the annual reports of United States Steel Corporation over the period 1902-1968. These extracts are milestones in the history of financial reporting in the United States, and the documents are presented as they originally appeared. They capture many historical events and the company management's reaction to them.

This book, first published in 1986, contains a series of articles from The Accountants' Magazine from the early years of the twentieth century. They provide insights into the development of accountancy as a profession, and the development of the professional bodies that oversaw it. Careful selection of the articles for this volume mean that there are often contrasting pairs of articles on the same subject, providing a neat summation of any debate on the topic.

This book, first published in 1995, collects together 26 of Leonard M. Savoie's key speeches, all previously unpublished. Savoie was a titan in accounting education and these chapters are of valuable historical importance to the field. Section 1 consists of reports to council of the AICPA, Section 2 deals with general professional and educational issues, and Section 3 focuses on specific accounting and auditing standard-setting issues.

This book, first published in 1986, includes primarily articles written by Church not reprinted in his books. The collection demonstrates the breadth of his work and demonstrate why he was such a renowned expert in the fields of cost accounting and management. He introduced the 'machine-hour rate' method, the production-centre concept, the 'regulative principles of management' and distribution cost-analysis. His writings spanned the fields of accounting, business, management and industrial engineering, and this book captures the essence of his work and central themes.

This book, first published in 1988, analyses the early development of the US public accounting profession. It gathers in one place writings - contemporary accounts, recollections and historical studies - that portray the early decades of the profession. It is a key book for students of the early development of the US accounting profession.

This volume contains 21 papers divided into three parts: introductory issues; the measurement and effects of diversity; and classification. The final parts looks at the scope of and the reasons for studying international accounting. There are also some papers on the causes of international differences, in particular the effects of international influences on a country's accounting practices. The papers in the second part examine the degree of accounting difference internationally and the reactions to this of companies and users of financial statements. The third part looks at several attempts to put countries into groups by similarities and differences in accounting. Several of these papers refer critically to others in the group, so that a corpus of knowledge in this field has been built up.