Accounting For Dummies

Description

I was preparing to start my own business, so wanted to get a basic understanding of accounting methodology. Motivated and ready, I made my way a third of the way through the book before it was clear that this was not the book for me. One problem I have is that I would think a dummies book would be focusing more on small business scenarios - but this dummies book started off with more complex business needs. And the book gave a lot of background on accounting, which while interesting, wasn't clear to me as to how it was to be relevant to me. So I gave up thinking this wasn't going to help me for a while. A few years later, I was asked to read "The Accounting Game" for a workshop. I groaned when I saw the cover containing a lemonade stand. But I learned so much from this book using an over simplified (or perhaps over complex) scenario of starting a lemonade stand business. Contrasted to the Dummies approach, the Lemonade Stand immediately walked me through filling out balance sheets, income statements, and cash statements using examples that got increasingly complex. By the end, I had a good basic understanding of accounting and some of the basic strategies. In fact, the Lemonade Stand was so good, that I started reading the Dummies book again. With my new knowledge, Dummies is making much more sense - and in a way is a very good complement to the Lemonade Stand. The Lemonade Stand focuses on a particular applied scenario, Dummies talks around the issues a little more academically. Ultimately, I want both under my belt. So I suppose I might summarize by saying that there are better applied books for learning basics behind accounting.