Intermediate Accounting For Dummies

Introduction

Intermediate accounting takes financial accounting, which is the language of business directed to the external user of the financial statements, to the next level. It fleshes out all the topics that your financial accounting class briefly touches upon and serves as a bridge between basic financial accounting and advanced financial accounting, which really gets into the nitty-gritty of handling financial transactions.

Along the way, you still encounter your old friends, the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows. And while preparation of the financial statements stays the same no matter what type of financial accounting class you take, intermediate accounting assumes you have a basic understanding of financial accounting and introduces you to more advanced accounting scenarios. For example, you get into inventory issues beyond cost flow assumption and find out about more advanced leasing topics such as residual value.

Although all business students have to take some form of financial accounting class, usually only students interested in pursuing a career in this field move on to intermediate accounting. Plus, intermediate accounting is a prerequisite for advanced financial accounting in many schools, which is a must-take class to prepare for the certified public accountant (CPA) exam.

After years spent in the classroom as both a professor and a student, I’ve realized that many accounting textbooks are, well, boring. My purpose in writing this ...