Accounting and Finance for Non-Specialists

by Peter Atrill, E. J. McLaney

The growth in the provision of education through open learning, coupled with increased pressures on teaching resources, has led to a greater emphasis on student-centred learning. Concurrently, the spread of modularization is giving students a broader choice of subjects to study beyond their major discipline, including elements of accounting and finance.
Conceived in response to this shift in approach and the growth of non-specialist classes, the text covers the principles of financial accounting, management accounting and financial management, emphasizing the application and interpretation of information for decision-making. Effective teaching and learning are facilitated through a variety of distinctive features; these are designed to encourage interaction and allow for flexible study and assessment; they have been expanded and improved in this second edition to include more integrated activities and self-assessment questions, all with answers; new end-of-chapter review questions; more end-of-chapter examination-style questions, now graded by their difficulty, with selected solutions; and new glossary of terms.

Genres: Business, Accounting, Finance, Nonfiction, Reference, Textbooks

407 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1994

Reviews

[Jukka Lauhia · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best management/accounting books to read or just browse.

[Hugh Griffiths]

Would you like to know about accounting and finance? Are you a non-specialist? This is certainly a book.

Interesting things for me:
That accounting is high-pressure because it's facing multiple directions, that it's representing company internal data to external stakeholders, that they need this to make financial decisions and that it needs to be absolutely objective because they're using it to answer questions like "is this business performing well and what can I expect to get if I give them my money" and "should we fire the CEO, aka your boss"
And also interesting how financial planning really needs to be abstracted from the business and industry, because it needs to cope with every possible human activity that someone could do in a business, because people will, and you need a way to meaningfully compare them all?

[Miracle Wong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book for the accounting course I took. The sample questions given caused me to think through the concepts more deeply. Overall was a friendly and digestible introduction to Accounting and Financing, especially for someone who had no related background to this field.

[Emad Turkistani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great for it's purpose

[Andrew Stannard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful examples to work through

[Grigory · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely good book if you're into that sort of things.

Will definitely re-read

[Steven Andrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book served as an educational aide for a university course on finance. Superbly written and very accessible.

[Timo · Rating 4 out of 5]

For beginners, easy and clear reading

[Mary Dias · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ✨

It's hard to rate a book that I read for university, especially since it is about accounting, one of my least favorite modules
However, I must point out that this book is pretty well put together, has several real-life examples for better understanding, and explains things well overall
My only complaint is that sometimes I felt like they used too many words in order to explain something relatively simple, which made its reading tiring at times
Overall, it's a nice option for someone whiteout any knowledge of accounting who wants to get started on it

[Shige · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in MBA study. Still this is a good reference of this area.

[Phil Filippak · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly good book for those who want to know how companies work. I skipped most of the practical exercises for I have no intention to do accounting by myself. Although, the broad view is valuable.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good primer for the financial accounting generalist. Clear descriptions with exercises and real life examples of the concepts described.