The eleventh edition of Accountants' Handbook continues the tradition established in the first edition over 82 years ago of providing a comprehensive single reference source for understanding current financial statement and reporting issues. It is directed to accountants, auditors, executives, bankers, lawyers, and other preparers and users of accounting information. Its presentation and format facilitates the quick comprehension of complex accounting-related subjects updated for today's rapidly changing business environment.

This edition of the Handbook continues the presentation of two soft-cover volumes; this edition contains a total of 49 chapters. To provide a resource with the encyclopedic coverage that has been the hallmark of this Handbook series, this edition again focuses on financial accounting and related topics, including those auditing standards and audit reports that are the common ground of interest for accounting and business professionals.

In the period since the last edition we have witnessed the initial wave of changes to accounting and auditing standards in response to the bankruptcies and frauds that prompted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Issues of earnings management, off-the-balance-sheet related business entities, unrecognized liabilities and the expensing of stock option grants are the focus of reinvigorated standard setting. Similarly, sweeping changes in the auditing environment such as the newly required audits of internal control (see Chapter 5 and the new structures for regulating public company auditors that have been put in place. This edition of the Handbook places those events and changes in context, and provides transition and understanding of the events that have led up to these reforms.

This edition provides expanded chapters on fraud and fraud-related issues, as these topics have become more prominent in the business literature and in practice, and management and auditors have by law and regulation, assumed, greater responsibility for preventing and detecting fraud.

In the period since the last edition, the harmonization of accounting and auditing principles has become an important element in the direction of standards setting, both for accounting and auditing. Few major accounting or auditing standards projects are undertaken without involvement or collaboration with the international counterpart standards group. While some may be concerned that this process may slow the standards setting process somewhat, the greater input from a broader cross section of business environment and the broader focus of the standards that are being set, may indeed provide a firmer foundation for promulgating more comprehensive and enduring standards.

Although the FASB continues to be the primary source of authoritative accounting guidance, other sources of guidance are important in today's practice. Pronouncements by the SEC, GASB, and EITF are important, particularly in specialized areas. It is necessary to look to the EITF and to the AICPA audit and accounting guides for guidance in industry-related or special-transaction areas. All of those sources of accounting guidance are included in the scope of this edition of the Handbook.

This edition of the Handbook is divided into two convenient volumes:

Volume One: Financial Accounting and General Topics includes:

Volume Two: Special Industries and Special Topics includes:

The specialized expertise of the individual authors remains the critical element of this edition as it was in all prior editions. The editors worked closely with the authors, reviewing and critically editing their manuscripts. However, in the final analysis, each chapter is the work and viewpoint of the individual author or authors.

Content of the chapters in this edition have been prepared and/or reviewed by professionals practicing in accounting firms, financial executives, university professors, and financial analysts and executives. Every major international accounting firm is represented among the authors. These professionals bring to bear their own and their firms' experiences in dealing with accounting practice problems. All of the authors and technical reviewers are recognized authorities in their fields and have made significant contributions to the eleventh edition of the Handbook.

Our greatest debt is to the authors and reviewers of this edition. We deeply appreciate the value and importance of their time and efforts. We also acknowledge our debt to the editors of and contributors to ten earlier editions of the Handbook. This edition draws heavily on the accumulated knowledge of those earlier editions. Finally, we wish to thank John DeRemigis and Judy Howarth at John Wiley & Sons, Inc., for handling the many details of organizing and coordinating this effort.

For convenience, the pronoun "he" is used in this book to refer nonspecifically to the accountant and the business person. We intend this pronoun to include women.

D. R. Carmichael

R. Whittington

L. Graham