Accounting All-in-One For Dummies, with Online Practice

Book Preface

To the general public, accounting means crunching numbers. Accountants are bean counters, whose job it is to make sure enough money is coming in to cover all the money going out. Most people also recognize that accountants
help individuals and businesses complete their tax returns. Few people give much thought to the many other facets of accounting.

Accounting is much more than just keeping the books and completing tax returns. Sure, that is a large part of it, but in the business world, accounting also includes setting up an accounting system, preparing financial statements and reports, analyzing financial statements, planning and budgeting for a business, attracting and managing investment capital, securing loans, analyzing and managing costs, making purchase decisions, providing financial insight and advice to business owners and management, and preventing and detecting fraud.

Although no single book can help you master everything there is to know about all fields of accounting, this book provides the information you need to get started in the most common areas

About This Book

Accounting All-In-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition expands your understanding of what accounting is and provides you with the information and guidance to master the skills you need in various areas of accounting. This book, actually nine books in one, covers everything from setting up an accounting system to preventing and detecting fraud:
» Book 1: Setting Up Your Accounting System
» Book 2: Recording Accounting Transactions
» Book 3: Adjusting and Closing Entries
» Book 4: Preparing Income Statements and Balance Sheets
» Book 5: Reporting on Your Financial Statements

» Book 6: Planning and Budgeting for Your Business
» Book 7: Making Savvy Business Decisions
» Book 8: Handling Cash and Making Purchase Decisions
» Book 9: Auditing and Detecting Financial Fraud

Foolish Assumptions

In order to narrow the scope of this book and present information and guidance that would be most useful to you, the reader, we had to make a few foolish assumptions about who you are:

» You’re an accountant, accountant wannabe, a businessperson who needs to know about some aspect of business accounting, or an investor who needs to know how to make sense of financial statements. This book doesn’t cover how to budget for groceries or complete your 1040 tax return. In other words, this book is strictly business. Some chapters are geared more toward accountants, while others primarily address business owners and managers.
» You’re compelled to or genuinely interested in finding out more about accounting. If you’re not motivated by a need or desire to acquire the knowledge and skills required to perform fundamental accounting tasks, you probably need to hire an accountant instead trying to do this stuff on your own.
» You can do the math. You don’t need to know trigonometry or calculus, but you do need to be able to crunch numbers by using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. As for that higher-level math, that’s why we have accounting software.