/********* START OF REVIEW **********/This book is very useful because the authors helps draw the interrelationships among different item lines in financial statements and shows how they all fit together, or use the author's words "all three financial statements fit together like tongue-in-groove woodwork. The three financial statements interlock with one another."One such link between balance sheet and income statements is the "Sales Revenue and Accounts Receivable link". From there we can calc...

This book is an absolute gem for people from non-accounting background. This book lays out the intricate details of the connection between the financial statements and brings to light the importance of differentiating the Earnings from the Cash-Flow. Its a must read book for any people starting out into Stock Investments with less accounting acumen.

For any business owner or manager, to keep his business up and running, it's very important to manage three aspects: making sure they earn a profit, maintaining assets & liability to an acceptable level, and ensuring that business generates cash flows. In order to do this, you need to have the ability to read three main financial statements:Balance SheetIncome StatementCash Flow StatementThis book beautifully teaches you to do just that. Furthermore, the author (being CPA himself), explains how

It was a good read. I had a fear of financial terms and concepts but starting with this book really give me a headstart and also, understood the basic knowledge about financial reports. I got to know about all the 3 statements (Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow Statement) and the relation between them. Clear, wise, and smart thinking is required before making any decisions about investing in public/private companies.

A very comprehensive guide on how to read financial statements. The last 20 pages are way too elementary, but overall it is a good revision on some of the key concepts in studying companies. I would recommend this to anyone who are new to accounting.

I read this book as part of my development goals for the year. I read it and took notes and studied it. The book is like reading a textbook and most of it was review from some of my MBA courses.I do plan to create a spreadsheet to measure the financial ratios of some companies just for practice after reading this.If you work in business in a non-accounting or finance role and want to learn more about how companies make profit, pay and control expenses, massage quarterly numbers reported to Wall

This book takes you through entries on financial documents like income statements and cash flow statements to show you how they tie together and what they might mean for a business. The author ends with some broader discussion of accounting and auditing decisions and challenges. As a guy who eked out a ‘C’ in “Accounting for Non-Majors”, this topic is not one I find particularly interesting however Mr. Tracy does a good job making the discussion relevant and digestible even for people like me.

Strongly recommend this book for any managers/lenders/investors/founders who need to work intimately with financial statements. Ideally, 75% what's covered in this book should feel like a summary of your existing financial knowledge. If it doesn't then I suggest picking up 'Financial Intelligence: A Manager's Guide for Knowing What the Numbers Actually Mean' as a starting point.

An introduction to financial statements: how to read them, ratios, pitfalls, common practices. That's a good starting point for those who need such knowledge (managers, entrepreneurs...). As the book was written for US readers (US accounting practices and regulations), you'll obviously have to find additional material elsewhere if you are in another country.

Not as difficult to read as I thought. In fact, it was quite readable. A good intro to financial statements. Plus, you can request a spreadsheet from the author to see how changes in performance are connected in the three financial statements.

I had know knowledge on financial terms and how to read financial reports before reading this. Easy understandable terminology and challenging. Anyone can start reading this. For sure I will reread this book every year.

This book saved my life in Financial Reporting!! The text book was not computing, and this spoke my language (and had helpful visuals!).

Super helpful and well written book

A Good Read. But it's not Updated enough.

The first two parts were good. The last part was too dry.

Really great book. Easy to understand. Contacted the author, John Tracy, with a few questions, and he actually replied! How awesome is that?!

A great point of entry for those who are just starting. It is easy to read and it opens you doors to search further.

Must read

First half of the book is solid (relationship between financial statements, specific examples, etc.) but the back half of the book is either out of date or so general that it isn't useful.

Solid. Preferred the second half to the first - worth powering through.

Didn't actually make it to the end. Well written, but couldn't sustain enough interest before library loan period was up.

This book does exactly what it says. A great reference to have around for any individual investor who isn't a CPA.

Authors offer a plethora of unnecessary and immaterial information. The writing is excessive, dry and esoteric. On kindle, page numbers do not correspond to the actual pages, making it difficult to reference pages in the book. Not a buy for sure. Borrow this one

Superb guideTaking the time to learn the basics of reading corporate financial statements can help you become more informed about your investments, your job and your business decisions. John A. Tracy provides a clearly written guide to core financial reports. He shows you how they fit together and why they matter. You will gain confidence as you work through the concepts he explains and begin to use what you learn to dig into the financials of familiar companies. In the hands of a lesser teacher...

My manager recommended this book to me when I mentioned wanting to build a stronger financial/business acumen. The book went above and beyond in terms of the walk through of a typical financial statement and the interrelationships between the different line items. While my head is still spinning a bit from the volume of content, I do feel better about reviewing a company's financial statement and being able to extract meaning from it.

Surprisingly and thoughtfully more opinionated than I would have ever expected from a book on this topic. Gets the job done with a few good "hmmm" moments sprinkled in there. Though, as Tracy stresses GAAP are constantly evolving, so this may be a great introductory course, but I imagine should probably be accompanied by a more recent work on the subject.

I am not an accountant or a finance major so I found this book to be very helpful. It took a concentrated effort on my part to follow along, but I found that John did an excellent job of reviewing cash flow statements, balance sheets and income statements line by line to increase my understanding. Furthermore, he illustrated the correlations between the reports.

Good introduction to financial reports and reporting. The only thing I did not like was that I had an older edition of the book, so some of the terminology and examples were a little awkward (such as one example of a depreciating asset being a typewriter!). Other than that, this would be a great first stoop for anyone looking to learn about finance and financial reporting.

This was a surprisingly useful book that I've gone back to reference several times after the initial read-through. It's a good guide for students learning the basics, but also it communicates some of the more advanced details like how certain accounts impact each other in each of the financial statements.

"How To Read a Financial Report" is an informative but extremely dull read. It's probably most useful as a reference for later. One great aspect of this book is its focus on how the three main statements: Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow fit together. Probably a pretty decent read for an accounting book, but I'd also rather stick a fork in my leg than read books about accounting!