"Accounting is the score keeping system in the 'game' of business--you can't do well in any 'game' if you don't understand how the score is kept. This book is intended to benefit practicing managers, MBA students, and nonaccounting business majors. United States financial reporting standards are compared and contrasted with international financial reporting standards where appropriate. The book emphasizes how management's choice of accounting methods and their required estimates in reporting transactions and events impact financial statements, both immediately and in the future. Unlike typical accounting books, journal entries are not used to illustrate topical coverage. This unique book exclusively provides a user's decision-making perspective by using the accounting equation format to directly illustrate financial statement effects of transactions and events. Most of the topics addressed in this book are typically studied by accounting majors in the two course 'intermediate' accounting sequence, but the text also includes discussion of consolidations--a topic generally covered in the 'advanced' accounting course. Intermediate accounting textbooks alone typically exceed well over 1,500 pages. By exclusively applying a user's perspective, and limiting topical content to areas relevant for decision making, this book allows nonaccountants to acquire the requisite underlying knowledge in a concise, easy to understand text."-- Cover.