Financial Statements by Thomas Ittelson

I have started Reading Financial Statements (affiliate link) by Thomas Ittelson. I will review each chapter as I read, and discuss what I liked, disliked and learned from each chapter.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 covers the 12 basic principles:

1. the accounting entity
2. going concern
3. measurement
4. units of measure
5. historical cost
6. materiality
7. estimates and judgments
8. consistency
9. conservatism
10. periodicity
11. substance over form
12. accrual basis of presentation

This chapter gives a basic definition of each, and explains why the principle was adopted. While this chapter reads more like a dictionary than anything else, the author does a good job of making the reasoning behind each principle clear while not going into too much detail.

The ease of reading this chapter gives me hope that this book will make understanding Financial Statements a breeze.

Looking through the table of contents, most of the chapters are around 25 pages in length and I think will make for nice small chunks to digest. If you follow along in the book with this series, please comment with your thoughts.