Reddit mentions: The best financial accounting books

I hope someone from the accounting degree/field can provide you with a more clear answer.

If you're having trouble retaining information, I would first consider, is this a field that you are even interested in? I get that it is a bit late after spending 3 terms on it but maybe it's not (just something to consider)? Also in a working world, you don't need to memorize everything like we do for tests. You have books and internet available where you can always utilize. It's not until you've been working in the "real world" do certain concepts sink in.

Second, if it comes to practice, there is alot you can do to keep applying your skills. A quick search on google just took me to this page: https://www.accountingcoach.com/quizzes. Has good amount of definitions and practice scenarios for you to calculate. I'm sure there's plenty of other sites as well.

I found someone recommending this book on another post: https://www.amazon.com/Schaums-Outline-Financial-Accounting-Outlines/dp/0071762507

Also, have you had a change to check out Lynda, Pluralsight or youtube videos (Lynda and pluralsight are free to use as a student from WGU)? I usually find that if I am having trouble understand certain concept from reading, it's better if I hear and see someone work out the problem.

I found this from youtube on your current course: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIEoX8IiVPT-dW1aFWaG7twxLXx45ILWW

In regards to the job market, I would say make sure you're finding a location that has plenty of Accounting job opportunities, so you can bounce around after getting 6 months - 1 yr experience at each. I found this to be very effective method for my friends who are in accounting who graduated from college.

Having a degree is going to check off a box for the hiring manager. It does show that even though you are from a different background, you were able to understand the concepts of the degree that you studied for (atleast at a foundational level). It doesn't guarantee anything like how you will work with others or how you are able to meet deadlines (you should def highlight that achievement of completing the contract in 6 months, wayy ahead of schedule). You have to be confident in your interviewing skills and be able to demonstrate that you are capable of doing the job.

I would def also look into doing a CPA. I know companies that have bonuses on the line depending on if you can finish your CPA within a certain time of employment.

In summary, use the resources that are available to understand the problem, practice as much as you can till you're confident in your abilities, and keep striving to improve yourself and skills everyday.

(P.s. sorry for rambling, I can hardly get myself to write a one page paper for history but felt certain things that need to be said. Also that last line you said "i would be fine with a...", get that out of your head. Aim higher, and if you achieve that, aim even higher).

I wish you and your family the best of luck and happiness!

I felt the same way, so I went and found a bunch. Here they are:

Start Your Business is the single greatest book on starting a business. It is a pretty comprehensive overview of all aspects. I would definitely recommend it.

Finance:

Financial Accounting is a decent text. The usefulness of financial accounting in general is quite limited for an entrepreneur though. The techniques are mainly used by outside parties to evaluate companies, whether for investing or lending. But it can be useful in that it gives a metric for how your company is doing.

Managerial Accounting is a good book. The subject matter is extremely important and should definitely be learned. Get a book on managerial accounting.

Marketing:

Marketing Management is a really good text for an overview of marketing. One of the best.

Most marketing texts are smaller and not textbooks like you're looking for. There are some detailed texts that go into complicated calculations related to marketing decisions. Go check them out. It's like marketing science or something like that.

Business Law:

Business law is not really worth going into extreme detail. So a good book is The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law .


Final Note: It's important to note that it makes way more sense to just get into business and learn as you go. You could spend years learning from every text possible and get nowhere.

Ok, well a lot of Introductory Accounting books are really more about bookkeeping than anything else. I'd avoid those. If you want to get a head start, the Phillips and Libby one is good. I teach it in my Intro Accounting class. This is an older edition, but you can get a used version for $3.00 on Amazon so that's a plus. Everything builds on the concepts in this book. To succeed in Accounting, you have to master debits/credits and journal entries. There are lots of great YouTube videos on Accounting concepts too so if there's something in the book that's not making sense, see if you can find a good video on the topic.

Here's a link to purchase the Phillips and Libby book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0078025370/ref=sr_1_1_twi_har_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1465504702&sr=8-1&keywords=fundamentals+of+financial+accounting+book+libby

Also, I haven't read this book, but it sounds like it covers all the basics well.

https://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Made-Simple-Explained-Pages/dp/0981454224/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465504552&sr=8-1&keywords=intro+accounting+book

Best of luck!

2018 graduate here. Here's what got me through.

• Move out of the dorms. My rent was $1000/month when I was living on Mission Hill with two roommates. You can go a fair bit lower if you're willing to compromise on roommates or location.
  
• Ditch the meal plan and learn to cook. It's a great skill to have and you'll be eating tastier, healthier food while also saving money. An Instant Pot or a Crock Pot is a fantastic investment for meal prep.
  
• Use your savings from co-op to cover living expenses. If you can, get your co-ops extended. Get a part-time job so you have spending money. (Keep in mind that the amount of money you'll make on co-op varies wildly depending on your major.)
  
• Start budgeting and get your personal finances together. Mint makes it very easy to pull together all of your information and see what you're spending. I also found this book to be very helpful.
  
  Going more into my own experience: I didn't have a meal plan after freshman year, and I moved off-campus after sophomore year. I only had to take one semester of summer classes, so for my other summers, I convinced my co-op employers to keep me through August (I was on the January-June cycle). I often worked as a TA when I was taking classes, and there was one semester where I did part-time work for a co-op employer.
  
  I think that the viability/payoff of staying at Northeastern really depends on your major. Ideally, your co-op money will help you get through school and the experience/networking will help you quickly get employed after graduating. If the prospects don't look good, then I think it makes more sense to transfer instead of staying and taking on tons of debt.

Someone PM'ed me asking about how hard the tests are and I thought other people might be curious.. so I decided to post my reply here.

The tests are not really that difficult. It's just a way that the OCC ensures that applicants have a basic understanding of accounting principles, can write reasonably well, and summarize complex information.

The knowledge test is 75 multiple choice questions and you’re given 90 minutes. It focuses on fundamental accounting principles, financial statements (and ratios), and the time value of money. I stalked your reddit history and saw that you’re in the accounting program.. so I don’t think you will have any trouble. I would brush up on the topics listed in the link below. I torrented the Schaum's Outline of Financial Accounting to get a high level overview of accounting principles. I also think the sample questions on that page are a good representation of the actual test. If you still have your MGA201 book that would work too. I finished the test in a half hour or so. It tells you if you passed immediately, but it doesn’t tell you how many you got wrong. Many of the questions were incredibly simple. I remember being shocked when the question came up: is cash a current asset or liability? Like really OCC?

I thought the written test was even easier than the knowledge test. You are given ten documents and need to reach a conclusion about the bank and support it. The test is used to assess how well you can organize a lot of information and convey your ideas. It’s not used to assess your knowledge of banking or anything else. I thought the test was easy because they give you all of the information that you need. The documents have a lot of cross references, one of them will say something like see document six. You have to be able to follow the references, and pull information from the various documents to support your conclusion. I don’t think there is anything that you can really study for this test.

I would suggest that you book an appointment to take the tests as soon as you can. I applied on the second to last day of the hiring period, and had to go to Rochester to take the test. You should be able to get a location in Buffalo though.

http://www.occ.gov/about/who-we-are/careers/knowledge-test-entry-bank-examiner.html

http://www.amazon.com/Schaums-Outline-Financial-Accounting-Edition/dp/0071762507

My advice

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https://www.amazon.com/Ledger-Accounting-Notebook-General-Journal/dp/1725930498

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Buy some cheap accounting notebook and keep entering all values in a format which you deem fit.

Keep refining the format until you see the desired results.

Once you are familiar with an accounting notebook, Well as they say you are the king!

The next step is to look for a software which can replace your monotonous work. Voila! Ms Excel comes to mind. After you master excel then, well sky is the limit. Keep progressing to a software of your choice.

Do you know of any good books (or websites) for learning practical applications and techniques for financial analysis?

I've been looking at this one but the reviews are mixed.

I am already an expert in Excel. I am looking to get a Financial Analyst job, and want to improve my ability to do the analysis.

(IANAA:) The entire 2016's income tax is filed between January 23, 2017 and April 15, 2017. If you expect to owe more than $1000 by file time for 2017 tax (filed in 2018), you do pay estimated tax all four quarters: due April, June, September, and the following January. The total amount due is the lesser of 100% of the previous year's (2016) tax, or 90% of the current year's (2017) tax. In the former case, you get your quarterly payment amount by dividing your previous year's tax by 4.

For e-file, here's an IRS-provided list of software and websites (it's empty until January 13th, so check then). My favorite is freefilefillableforms.com (open on January 23rd) -- this presents to you a blank tax form and you fill in the fields and forms you know are needed.

To learn how the forms and taxes work, I highly recommend filling them out by hand and following their line-by-line instructions: 1040, Schedule C, and Schedule SE. The instructions are very logical and highlight exactly how your deductions are qualified and calculated.

And FWIW, these couple books were very helpful to me: here's a very simple primer on small business tax, and if you want to learn basic bookkeeping.

Ahhh okay, if you can learn stuff from your parents, you might be alright then.
I just had a look at my Amazon list with the textbooks I was supposed to buy, this was the main one that's got everything you need , but they had it for about a tenner less before, so wait for it to go down again if you get it. I used this one from the library, and I thiink I did okay.

Also my teacher recommended this one, with the other units should be in the recommended bit and I know a lot of people found them useful, but I never looked in it.

I posted this same thread not too long ago, might want to check the comments there.

So far I did absolutely nothing recommended, haha. This is what I did instead:

• Coursera's "Learning how to learn" - I definitely recommend this. Covers how your brain absorbs information and some tips on how to be an efficient learner.
  
• MITx "Intro to Computer Programming using Python" - I'm doing this just for fun. About 60% done.
  
• Kaplan's MBA fundamentals - Haven't started yet. But I bought the Accounting book since I know that I'm weak at accounting (Got a C back when I was in college).
  
  I plan on studying some case studies when I'm done with those three, and hopefully maybe read one or two recommended books.

This is what we use in our Intro to Financial courses. Naturally, this is the Canadian edition, but I'm assuming that the American version is just as useful. Concepts are explained clearly with myriad real-world examples.

Hey, I just finished reading Financial Accounting by Robert Libby (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0078111021/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) as my first Accounting textbook, and was wondering if you had another textbook like book to recommend I move on to next? I'll probably read Quality of Earnings in tandem, unless you feel I'd get more out of it when I have a better sense of Accounting in general.

I used this dataset in my Data Mining course at Uni: https://www.kaggle.com/c/GiveMeSomeCredit

Also, if you want to get into Credit Scoring look into getting this book: https://www.amazon.com/Credit-Risk-Scorecards-Implementing-Intelligent/dp/047175451X

Everyone I know who are into Credit Scoring either learned from this book or from a mentor who learned from this book.

Hope those help.

Added Accountants Handbooks. Great Resources as well, in case of reference.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Accountants-Handbook-D-R-Carmichael/dp/1118171802/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526427262&sr=1-1&keywords=aCCOUNTANTS+handbooks

More of a technical book, but I've found Practical Financial Modelling to be very helpful.

My personal undergrad favourite: Financial Accounting (2013) by Weygandt, Kieso and Kimmel.

The examples are very clear, and they join everything to the accounting equation at every step.

I like the Kieso books here

and Schaum's outline if you just need a quick review of the topic.

but yeah, I'd pass on the courera courses. Way too basic.

Accounting demystified by Jeffery Haber.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0814407900/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_86yrybC5ZAZB5

It's a super quick read, and he teaches so well. Covers basic financial accounting.

Here's the books that were in my financial accounting class in grad school (looked for the most recent edition). This or something similar would be a good source:

Financial Accounting for MBAs (4th Ed)

Financial Accounting: A Management Perspective (16th Ed)

Financial Statement Analysis & Valuation (2nd Ed)

Of course, there's also endless amounts of resources on the intarwebs.

If you're not looking specifically for an academic book (e.g. Wiley Intro to Financial, etc.), this one should give you a good understand of the principles and basis for the field:

http://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Demystified-Jeffry-R-Haber/dp/0814407900/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1331929510&sr=8-11

If you need help with basic accounting principles, [this] (https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Accounting-Business-Decision-Making/dp/1118162285/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1499306395&sr=8-2&keywords=financial+accounting+7th) book is fairly inexpensive and covers most of the basics. Chapter 5 covers inventory systems.

This one so you can actually learn how to keep track of your money. All the books I've seen listed here so far are just inspirational garbage, with little to no practical knowledge.

http://www.amazon.com/Wiley-Review-Financial-Accounting-Reporting/dp/1118277228

That is a link to one section, for $10 used 2013 edition. It will work fine. Get the same edition for the other sections.

hi
i want this Ebook .. ASAP

https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Accounting-4th-Robert-Kemp/dp/0134125053

plz give me ur email and PM

Are you referring to this one?



https://www.amazon.com/Schaums-Outline-Financial-Accounting-Outlines/dp/0071762507

I haven't had a chance to look through it yet but I found this a couple weeks ago when I was looking for review material. They have several books that cover the full range of accounting and they're affordable.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0071762507?pc_redir=1408428804&robot_redir=1

You misinterpreted my remark. I did not ignore your source, but I admittedly did not read it in its entirety, not did I read each citation in the document. I will edit this past to include a list of useful books when I return home.

Edit: The reason why commercial banks create the illusion of an inflated monetary supply is that certain low-risk investments (demand deposits, treasury bills, and commercial paper to name a few) are grouped as cash on financial statements. Thus, if you were to add up all of the "cash" recorded in every company and individual's "balance sheet," you would find that the total exceeds that of the total monetary supply. The reason for this is that all of these assets share the same characteristics. They are highly liquid, and fungible. Distinguishing these assets from cash is immaterial in every way; it would provide no additional useful information to stakeholders, and would be costly to report. For more information on these accounting principles, consult Financial Accounting.

Commercial banks (which I will later distinguish from Investment banks) have a very well defined business model. Through a combination of equity and semi-permanent liability funding, they make loans with varying degrees of risk (E.G. car loans and mortgages). Deposits in these types of institutions can be revoked at any time, thus the name demand deposit, the deposit will be refunded on demand. These are the types of banks you are talking about. This type of financing is substantially similar to financing options available to corporations, especially commercial paper. For more information on Corporate Finance, consult Ross. For more information on treasury management, consult Bragg.

I get where you are coming from. A lot of people want to blame banks for the recent recession. I think there is an argument to be made that investment banks inadequately estimated and reported risks in certain investments. But it is important to distinguish commercial banks from investment banks. Commercial banks take deposits from customers, and provide low risk loans to generate revenue. Depositors have very little control over the investments involved, and commercial banks are required to maintain accounts at the federal reserve, and maintain a reserve of cash to refund deposits. Depositor's accounts are insured by the FDIC (in the States). These accounts are reported as cash. Investment banks take deposits from customers, and invest in a variety of financial instruments. Often, depositors maintain control over the investments made in their accounts. Investors bear the liability for any losses on their accounts, and earn any income generated by the financial instruments. Investors are not guaranteed by the FDIC. These accounts are reported as investments, not cash.

Neither of these types of accounts pull money out of the air, or generate something for nothing. Again, I think there is an argument to be made that investment bankers have, in the past, poorly reported risk exposure. There is also an argument to be made that moral hazard became involved through government institutions such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. There is not, however, room to argue that banks are some sort of magical institutions which have any special powers that you or I do not. If you want to argue that banks are bad, blame investment banks for inadequate risk disclosure. Blaming commercial banks for the recent recession is a bit like blaming Netflix for the collapse of Enron.