'Financial Accounting' by Roger Lewis and Roger Trevitt: Nelson Thornes

Teaching Business & Economics, Autumn 2003 by Widdowson, Paul

'Financial Accounting' by Roger Lewis and Roger Trevitt: Nelson Thornes; 100 Pages; ISBN 0-7487-7110-7: Price £7.00

The book follows the approach of the Marketing and Promotional book above but not entirely. It does not have the 'Need to know' and the 'Need to do' sections that for my students would be a must. The book continues to have the excellent layout of a 25% margin with the arrows to case study 'real life' situations, illustrations and other useful information. A welcome addition in the margin are the green shaded 'Key Terms' which in my opinion is better there than in a list at the back of the book. Again the 'Activities' are in grey and the 'Case Studies' are in pink. Although there are a good number of 'Case Studies', I still feel that there could be more. Despite the pink and the green, the amount of dense text and the grey shaded 'Activities' does give the book a grey feel to it. As students already see 'Accounts' as a dull topic, I think more colour is needed. If more pink 'Case Studies' were added and the pink and grey 'Need to Know/Do' sections were included, they would go a long way to alleviating this problem.

Nevertheless the appendix is very good with students being able to follow a fully worked example of accounts through from documents to trial balance. I would have liked to see the example continue through to 'Final Accounts' but the idea is good and I hope to see it expanded.

The excellent layout, text, activities and green shaded key terms would see me buy this book for my students but the lack of the 'Need to Know/Do' sections and perhaps too few case studies make it too similar to other publishers' books for me. Nevertheless it is a good book and I would certainly use it in my teaching of 'Accounts'.

Paul Widdowson