Summary of The Power of Accounting

Lawrence D. Lewis

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Rating

7 Overall

8 Applicability

4 Innovation

8 Style

Recommendation

If you are terrible at math, hate numbers and find financial analysis a bore, this slim volume is for you. Professor Lawrence D. Lewis helps the numerically challenged understand and appreciate how important, instructive and beautiful accounting can be. He explains how managers make strategic decisions using the information accounting provides. Lewis includes summaries and exercises at the end of each short, easy chapter. His enlightening quotes and witty references make debits and credits seem almost fun. getAbstract recommends this basic primer on “the language of business” to students, new managers and anyone seeking accounting know-how.

In this summary, you will learn

Why accounting isn’t as precise as it seems,
What basic elements it encompasses, and
How to use accounting data to make operational and strategic decisions.

About the Author

Lawrence D. Lewis is an author, a consultant and an accounting professor at the University of Portland.

Summary

Accounting as Art and Science
Accounting deals with numbers, formulas and ratios. Accounting’s results are “reasonable estimates or approximations of real-world economic events.”

Like a language, accounting’s meanings and vocabulary vary according to who’s using them and...