Monday, October 7, 2013

Finance & Accounting for Nonfinancial Managers (2011), 1st Edition, Steven A. Finkler




For all entrepreneurs and nonfinancial professionals with budget and/or P&L responsibilities, Finance and Accounting for Nonfinancial Managers provides the basics necessary to make a solid contribution to the financial goals and success of their companies. This indispensible and easy-to-read primer gives all entrepreneurs and managers in nonfinancial areas--sales, marketing, production, and more--a complete understanding of financial terms, statements, and ratios and how they affect the operations of a business or corporation. With this information, financial managers will be able to understand: owners' equity, ratio analysis; balance sheets; income statements; LIFO liquidations; asset valuation; cash flow statements; capital leasing; liabilities; present value; operating leverage; breakeven analysis; and more. New to the third edition are chapters covering: basic tax concepts; capital structure; business plans; working capital management and banking relationships; personal finances; and accountability and controls. This edition also comes with a CD-ROM with interactive Excel templates that lets managers immediately apply the concepts and techniques covered. Topics covered include: 1. An introduction to financial management 2. A primer on taxes 3. Accounting concepts 4. An introduction to key financial statements 5. The role of the outside auditor 6. Valuation of assets and equity 7. Recording financial information 8. Reporting financial information 9. Business plans 10. Capital structure--long-term debt and equity financing 11. Leverage 12. Strategic planning and budgeting 13. Investment analysis 14. Lease or buy? A taxing question 15. Depreciation: Having your cake and eating it too! 16. Working capital management and banking relationships 17. Inventory costing 18. Cost accounting 19. Accountability and internal control 19. A closer look at financial statements 21. Notes to the financial statements 22. Ratio analysis 23. Personal finance.

About the Author
Steven Finkler is a Professor of Accounting and Financial Management at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School, New York University. At the Wagner School he is the Director of Finance Specialization. He holds a bachelor's degree with a major in Finance and a master's degree in Accounting from the Wharton School. His master's degree in Economics and Ph.D. in Business Administration are from Stanford University. Before joinging NYU, he was on the faculty of the Wharton School. An award-winning teacher and author, he has also written other books on budgeting, cost accounting and financial management, as well as hundreds of articles. He worked for several years as a CPA with Ernst & Young.

I am the author. I would like to point out that the reviews that appear here, which are dated prior to May 2002, are for the previous edition. In this new Third Edition, I have worked hard to take this top-selling, clearly written book, and add content in many areas to provide more depth to the book. There are six new chapters covering tax concepts, capital structure, business plans, working capital and banking relationshsips, accountability and control, and personal finances. In addition many other chapters have been siginficantly modified and or supplemented with new information. I hope you enjoy my book.

Though rudimentary, this book filled some gaps for me left by more advanced texts, including some definitions that I was fuzzy on, and enlightened me as to why some things are on financial statements in the form they're in, since I don't have a business education background.

The CD contains the text, which is handy on a laptop, but marred by having the text superimposed on a busy patterned background that has some kind of periodic highlights that are particularly annoying (the current generation of magazine, book and web site designers can't seem to grasp that the point of text is to be read, and that stuff that looks nifty on the computer screen may be darn near impossible to read in print; busy photo backgrounds, light text on dark backgrounds etc. belong ONLY in ads, where no one is expected to read the text anyway.)

Also, the spreadsheets would have been more useful if incorporated in groups into workbooks instead of individual ones. You can't readily get numbers from one to another. And the disk titles are of the "sheet23.xls" variety, not helpful for finding the one you want, so you have to either have the book listing handy or access them strictly from the CD PDF file text.

Being used to technical book web sites that contain errata, new material, suggestions from users, etc., I was disappointed to find nothing new there. And the list of web links, as usual in this fast-changing world, contains a number of missing links. I would have appreciated a good old fashioned bibliography in addition to the links, because you can usually find out of print books through a library, used dealers on the web, and most really important books and texts have current editions.

As a physician health care executive in a large integrated system, there was very little that I had learned in med school on finance and accounting. Dr. Finkler's book was direct, easy to understand, a quick read, and laced with humor. It is a must read for new physician managers!

Product Details :

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: CCH Incorporated; 4 Pap/Cdr edition (March 25, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0808025767
  • ISBN-13: 978-0808025764
  • Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 5.9 x 8.8 inches


More Details about Finance & Accounting for Nonfinancial Managers (2011), 1st Edition

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