<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Customer review
Review: I am also a Master level student. I read this book and it is a great shame to the profession and a great insult to the public at large, let alone students who have to pay dearly for this textbook with a low rate of return. When discussing Accounting, Ethics should be close at heart to these experts. Unfortunately, it shows none here whatsoever. In general, I find it is a great disturbance for these self-pronounced" experts in Accounting to write such a low quality textbook with a great violation of the technical writing 's ethical category, ie, repetitive, clustered, hard to understand, contradictory sometimes; but most of all the English language used in certain introductory chapters, ie, chapters one and two, full of grammatical errors, punctuations, paragraphs and sentences are ambiguous, vague, and copied directly from the code law book. etc... We have zillions law in the USA, one more to make these authors accountable for their writings and so-called expertise in the field would NOT hurt too much. We, the students are YOUR customers, not the Professors who force your book in our throats! Be ethical, be responsible so we can avoid FRAUD, UNETHICAL practices in the real world. After all, we learn from your textbook for God's sake. Treat us with decency, and kindness, and the world shall be better if not in this generation. And remember when you die, you do not take the earthly paper of award or recognition with you. Leave your good name with a good morality instead. In the commercial world of Capitalism, the customers thrive the demand and supply. Think about it....
Rating: 
Summary: Dazed and Confused...
Review: I am currently a Masters level student who is taking a Governmental Accounting course. I have found this text to be somewhat confusing. The chapters and the information are very detailed however, the study questions introduce new terms and are hard to follow. This makes for a complicated and frustrating process for anyone who has not had a previous accounting course. I understand that there are not many books out there on this topic. However, a study guide or even the assistance of a glossary and some consistency in phrasing questions to be similar to the text would help. If I can't understand what the question is asking how am I to know if I understand what I thought I just read. The lack of pictures and graphics does not bother me and the blue ink while hard to get used to is easier on my eyes. The Powerpoint presentations were also helpful.
Rating: 
Summary: Found it to be quite informative
Review: I am not sure why the other reviewers had problems with this book. I actually found it to be quite easy to read and understandble in its explanations of terminology. I work for a software company which sells a budgeting tool. Since realigning over to our public sector division, I decided to buy this book in order to hone my governmental accounting skills. My accounting degree certainly helped and this books assumes a minimal set of accounting skills. The problems were quite helpful in reinforcing the concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Found it to be quite informative
Review: I am not sure why the other reviewers had problems with this book. I actually found it to be quite easy to read and understandble in its explanations of terminology. I work for a software company which sells a budgeting tool. Since realigning over to our public sector division, I decided to buy this book in order to hone my governmental accounting skills. My accounting degree certainly helped and this books assumes a minimal set of accounting skills. The problems were quite helpful in reinforcing the concepts.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent textbook
Review: I just finished a Governmental Accounting class that used this textbook. It is by far the worst book I have had in 4 years of college. The examples are horrible. There is no color. Most accounting authors try to make the material interesting. This is a book that will turn potential accounting majors away from the field.
Rating:
Summary: Worst Accounting Book Ever
Review: I just finished a Governmental Accounting class that used this textbook. It is by far the worst book I have had in 4 years of college. The examples are horrible. There is no color. Most accounting authors try to make the material interesting. This is a book that will turn potential accounting majors away from the field.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent textbook
Review: I used this textbook the last time I taught GovernmentalAccounting. The book is an excellent introduction to state and local government accounting and reporting, federal government accounting, not-for-profit organizations (colleges, universities, health care organizations, etc.), and public sector auditing. The 20 chapters have numerous illustrations of financial statements and flow charts relating each of the different fund types within specific organizations. The illustrations are both academic (i.e., written by the authors) and actual (e.g., City of Des Moines, Iowa). Where appropriate, there are chapter glossaries. Governmental accounting is unlike corporate accounting, in that both actual and budgetary amounts are shown in the financial statements provided to the external reader. The authors explain this clearly. The authors use t-accounts to show the interrelationship of the accounts and the flow of funds between the accounts. There also useful references to the Governmental Accounting Standards Board... The previous comment shows a typical response from an undergraduate, similar to what I have encountered on teaching evaluations in my different classes. A number of students believe that a course should be "interesting." That is, more entertaining. (See Peter Sacks's book, _Generation X Goes to College_.) If someone doesn't find governmental accounting interesting, don't major in accounting. It is not a requirement for any other undergraduate major at any school I know; indeed, few schools even teach the course. People should major in areas that they find interesting. On the other hand, anyone who wants to understand the construction and analysis of statements which present the operations and financial position of government and non-profit entities will benefit from a careful reading of this book. I have used it for directed readings (only one student reading on his or her own) successfully for motivated graduate students. The previous commentator faults the book for lack of color. For this material, color adds almost nothing to comprehension, slightly to clarity and greatly to the cost. The book already costs $100, because the governmental accounting textbook market, with numerous competitors in it, is only 3,000-4,000 classroom adoptions per year (compared with over 50,000 a year for Principles of Accounting). My experience as an author suggests that adding color would raise the cost of the book to at least $140. Would the previous reviewer be willing to spend the money in the hopes it would be more interesting? I recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Certainly not the book to use
Review: In general, this is the worst accounting book I have EVER been forced to decipher (didn't like our cost accounting book either). At my school, and probably elsewhere, ,everybody seems to think Acct 405 (Financial Acct 2) is the "hard" course, but Fin Acct 2, at least to me, has NOTHING on trying to learn governmental accounting from using this awful book.
<< 1 >>
|
