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Financial Shenanigans: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Fraud in Financial Reports, Second Edition
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Sales rank 53,046
Customers rating (based on 37 reviews)
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Techniques to uncover and avoid accounting frauds and scams Inflated profits . . . Suspicious write-offs . . . Shifted expenses . . . These and other dubious financial maneuvers have taken on a contemporary twist as companies pull out the stops in seeking to satisfy Wall Street. Financial Shenanigans pulls back the curtain on the current climate of accounting fraud. It presents tools that anyone who is potentially affected by misleading business valuationsÂÂfrom investors and lenders to managers and auditorsÂÂcan use to research and read financial reports, and to identify early warning signs of a company's problems. A bestseller in its first edition, Financial Shenanigans has been thoroughly updated for today's marketplace. New chapters, data, and research reveal contemporary "shenanigans" that have been known to fool even veteran researchers.
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| Publisher | McGraw-Hill | | Release date | 03/2002 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Hardcover |
| | List price | $34.95 | | Our price | $23.07 (you save 33.99%) | | Used price | from $13.4 |
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 Covers All The Basics
This is a great summary of the most-used tricks to sliding around in the gray areas of GAAP accounting in the US. These specific techniques likely represent 80% or more of the different tricks used from 1990-2007 by large corporations to manipulate their earnings and other performance, one of the main benefits of which is increasing their stock price. If the book was used by rank and file investors to look in detail at annual reports of their portfolio companies, they'd have a good early warning signal for the typical practices. And it includes sometimes shocking but always interesting true case studies of these techniques. A drawback might be that it is dated or does not include some more sophisticated techniques.
Not the Best, But Good
As a college-level lecturer in Forensic Accounting, I seriously considered using this book, but decided not to. While it is clearly the most readable book in the area of forensic accounting, it is lean on examples and does not include citations to the cases and other materials it describes.
A far better, though more difficult, book on the narrow subject of financial fraud is The Financial Numbers Game: Detecting Creative Accounting Practices and a better book on Forensic Accounting generally is Forensic and Investigative Accounting (Third Edition).
In any event, you'll be better off avoiding Fraud Examination (with ACL CD-ROM), which spends most of its time (i.e., your time) moralizing and psychoanalyzing those who commit fraud.
 good book
This book is very through. It assumes that you have some background in accounting or finance. I do not, I am an average person who has never taken an accounting class or business class in my life but I'm able to follow the author. Schlit writes in an effective manner that keeps you involved and interested in what he's talking about. He also gives you hints and clues to follow when you are reading a financial statement. He tells you what to look for and what that may imply. This is a must have for any investor. If you have ever had any misgivings or questions about a corporation's management and accounting, this book will provide you with the tools to sniff out the shenanigans on your own. Well written, interesting and very insightful.
Excellent primer on accounting fraud
I recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who invests in individual stocks or who runs a business. This details many different ways to commit accounting fraud. Perhaps the best part of the book is that there are many detailed examples of each kind of fraud. Also, the book is highly readable and not dry at all. I could hardly put it down once I started.
Great summary of earnings manipulation tactics
This is the best summary of major earnings manipulation techniques that I have seen to date (The appendix: "Comprehensive Checklist of Warning Signs" alone is worth the investment). As a practitioner, it wasn't as in-depth as I hoped it would be, but as others have noted, it is very well written, and has many brief, but interesting examples. The lack of depth is understandable because it allows the author to reach a much broader audience effectively.
This book should be part of your investment library, and reviewed often, as it is so easy to overlook early signs of faltering performance from companies. Highly recommended.
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