This book presents accounting concepts and practices in a simple, reader-friendly manner. It gives an in-depth understanding of the fundamentals carefully woven with years of corporate experience. In other words, this book helps the readers learn and understand the tenets encompassing:

• Preparation
• Use and Analysis of Financial Statements
• Supplemented by Real Life Examples and Scenarios
• Presented in a Concise, Simple and Comprehensive Manner

This book will be helpful for students and practitioners as it covers the course of PGDM/MBA taught in leading business schools in the country. Also, the level of discussion, illustrations, and exercises covered in each chapter are well attuned to professional courses such as Chartered Accountancy in India (ICAI) and the UK’s Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). Furthermore, this book’s chapters have been aligned with the course content as prescribed by the majority of Indian universities for their Commerce/Accountancy courses.

The Present Publication is the Reprint July 2023 Edition, authored by Dr Narender L. Ahuja and Dr Varun Dawar. The structure of the book is as follows:

• [Introduction to Accounting] Chapter 1 introduces the need for accounting and briefly explains the difference between financial accounting and management accounting. It further focuses on the purpose of preparing profit and loss account and balance sheet and discusses the need to audit financial accounts.
• [Accounting Concepts, Conventions and Policies] Chapter 2 introduces the main accounting concepts and conventions. The chapter further focuses on the distinction between accrual and cash accounting systems and identifies the qualitative characteristics of financial statements.
• [Recording Transactions in the Journal and the Ledger] Chapter 3 discusses the accounting equation and double-entry accounting principles for recording transactions involving assets, liabilities, capital, expenses and revenues. It further identifies the steps in the accounting cycle and explains how to analyse transactions for journalising and ledger posting.
• [Trial Balance to Financial Statements] Chapter 4 introduces the readers to trial balance and its preparation, including the adjustment entries required for various items.
• [Inventory, Depreciation and Accounting Errors] Chapter 5 discusses the main cost formulae for inventory valuation. It further focuses on the primary methods for calculating depreciation, including its accounting treatment.
• [The Annual Report – Qualitative and Quantitative Disclosures] Chapter 6 discusses the general disclosures in an annual report in terms of the requirements of various bodies and highlights the structure and format of an annual report. This chapter helps readers understand the objectives of the Management Discussion and Analysis section and the significance of the Director’s and Auditor’s reports. This chapter aims to enable readers to understand the progress or health of the state of affairs of a company through its yearly document, the ‘Annual Report’.
• [Analysing Financial Statements – I | Financial Ratios Analysis] Chapter 7 discusses the need for financial ratios analysis and covers various types of ratios such as liquidity ratios, profitability ratios and capital structure ratios and their use in carrying out inter-firm and inter-period comparison of performance.
• [Analysing Financial Statements – II | Horizontal, Common-size and Trend Analysis] Chapter 8 discusses the important yet simple techniques of horizontal, common-size and trend analysis, which are integral to financial ratios analysis.
• [Statement of Cash Flows] Chapter 9 introduces the readers to the cash flow statement, its importance and uses. The chapter further explains the methods of computing activity-wise cash flows and their analysis and interpretation.
• [Consolidated Financial Statements | Introduction, Balance Sheet Consolidation, Consolidated Profit & Loss Statement and Further Aspects] Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 discuss the meaning of parent-subsidiary relationship and objectives of consolidated financial statements. These chapters would help readers understand the basic principles of preparing the consolidated statements and enumerate differences between the treatment of pre-acquisition and post-acquisition profits for consolidation.
• [Consolidated Financial Statements – III | Vertical & Mixed Groups, Piecemeal Acquisitions and Associates] Chapter 12 introduces the readers to the consolidation of vertical and mixed groups and the consolidation of piecemeal acquisitions and associates.
• [Convergence of Indian Accounting Standards with IFRS] Chapter 13 discusses the need for uniformity and transparency in reporting standards and the roadmap for implementation of Indian Accounting Standards (Ind AS) to achieve convergence with IFRS (International Accounting Standards). The chapter further lists the major differences between the Indian GAAP (current Indian accounting standards), converged Indian accounting standards (Ind AS) and IFRS.