Our goal in writing this book was to satisfy the needs of today’s accounting students by providing the most contemporary, relevant, engaging, and student-oriented textbook available. We think that we have accomplished that objective by maintaining a conceptually rigorous discussion of the material in an intuitive and student-friendly style. Prior to writing this book, we both taught advanced financial accounting for many years, and we both felt that the structure and format of available textbooks contributed to the difficulties that our students have had in learning the material. several examples come to mind:

Too many issues discussed simultaneously. Taken individually, consolidation issues can be difficult for students to grasp. The learning process is made all the more difficult when a particular topic (intercompany sales of assets, for example) is presented using alternative methods of pre-consolidation equity investment bookkeeping (e.g., equity, partial equity, and cost). Our experience—and the experience of many of our focus group participants—indicates that students are generally confused by the mixing of bookkeeping approaches in the main-chapter discussion of most textbooks. To address this issue, we present only two pre-consolidation bookkeeping approaches: equity method and cost method. In each consolidations-related chapter, we begin the consolidations-related discussion with the equity method because it provides the clearest and easiest-to-understand linkage between the parent’s pre-consolidation financial statements and the consolidated financial statements. We then use a page-edge border to very clearly mark the pages in which we discuss cost-method consolidations procedures. By clearly distinguishing between the two approaches, we make it much easier for instructors and students to know exactly which approach we are covering. In addition, this makes tailoring the material much easier. For example, if an instructor wishes to only cover the equity method of pre-consolidation bookkeeping, the easy-to-follow chapter set-up makes this possible.
Mechanics versus intuition. After completing our courses and entering the working world, our former students have encountered many different consolidation approaches used by their employers and clients. Given the diversity of processes and procedures in practice, we adjusted our own teaching styles to emphasize an intuitive understanding of the concepts over the rote memorization of static journal-entry approaches. unfortunately, the available textbooks were mostly written with a mechanical perspective. in writing this text, we incorporated our teaching-based observations. In each chapter, we initially focus on conceptual explanations and discuss mechanics only after we convey an intuitive perspective on each topic. In addition, to help students immediately identify each of the various consolidation entries, we consistently color-code the C-E-A-D-I consolidation entries throughout the chapter discussion, the consolidation-entry listings, and in the consolidation worksheets.
Connection between fund-base statements and government-wide statements. Most texts combine, in a single chapter, fund-based accounting and government-wide financial statements, and do not demonstrate how government-wide statements are generated from fund-based accounting. We address this issue by covering these topics in two separate chapters, and we focus on the adjustments necessary to create government-wide financial statements described in the reconciliations from fund statements to government-wide statements. We present this material within the context of an actual new england town. The town is large enough to demonstrate the accounting concepts, yet small enough to avoid obscuring the learning process with unnecessary complexity.
Not written for students. Many texts are written using overly technical language. Our text, while rigorous, is written in a student-friendly, conversational style that makes the material much easier for students to comprehend and apply.
This book is the product of extensive market research including focus groups, market surveys, class tests, manuscript reviews, and interviews with faculty from across the country. We are grateful for the feedback from faculty who reviewed, and students who studied, early drafts of our text.