Accounting for Dummies 3rd Ed. audiobook

I laughed. I cried. I ran the full gamut of emotions. And that was before opening the book.

overall a great look at accounting, just like you would expect from this book. went more in depth than I expected, which was nice. took me awhile to get through because it's a bit dry.... only so much you can do to spice up an accounting book.

Welcome to the incredible world of Accounting! Yay! Accounting for Dummies is a book in the series that introduces Accounting practices to the layman. It discusses the differences between Bookkeeping and Accounting, a point that I had forgotten or overlooked. The author makes it a point to differentiate between the two of them. For instance, while a person that does Bookkeeping might use software and enter data into a computer program, an Accountant would choose between the different brands of accounting software and get to make specialized decisions. In general, the Accountant is the boss or manager of the Bookkeeper.While I had taken a College Course in Accounting, that is already a story that is over a decade old. I didn’t particularly enjoy the class since it was dry, dull, and overly technical. Not that I expected something exciting, but I figured it would at least be interesting. I was wrong in that sense. Perhaps I wanted to test the Accountant waters and see what it was like.I had hoped to brush up on some of the Accounting Jargon and maybe refresh my memories of what exactly Accounting is. In that vein, this book didn’t disappoint me. It contains a lot of information that pertains to Accounting; from the fact that you don’t need to be a CPA to be an accountant(it helps though), to the fact that there is no international Accounting Standard in place as of the printing of this book. The major parts of importance discuss how to read Financial Statements and other forms of Financial Reports. For instance, while profit is reported, it is not an independent account. It isn’t even consistently called profit. Sometimes it goes by Net Earnings or Earnings.So it does put a large amount of effort into raising your Financial Literacy. It even goes into ‘Cooking the Books,’ stressing the fact that this is illegal. However, I suppose if you know what to look for, you can find it better in your own business or personal life. So the book is really useful. I only have one problem with the book itself. Accounting For Dummies has no workable problems. I suppose that this isn’t a huge deal since the mathematics involved with accounting is pretty basic. It isn’t like it would be for Actuarial Science or something along those lines.In any case, this book was still good. It talks about developing an active reading stance for financial reports and so on. I would say it is pretty invaluable.

I listened to this as an audiobook, which was probably a bad choice (like milk). The book seems to be a high-level management style overview of basic accounting principles. As an audiobook it was sometimes difficult to picture in my head the various types of accounting forms that the author was speaking on (Simon... That was for you). I assume that in the real book there are likely examples to make this easier. I would recommend this book for anyone looking for a high-level view of business accounting, but I would recommend the actual physical book and not the audio version.

This a great study guide. I love how it contains so much, but is so little.

This book made my fear of accounting go away. It seems to be more organizing than math skills needed. I feel much more prepared. Accounting is my very first MBA class starting September 7, 2013.