About the books

"Accounting Makes Cents!" (both the 7th Edition and the 7th Revised Edition) provide a complete introduction for the student who is studying Accounting for the first time or at a tertiary institution.

Now in its 14th year of publication, Accounting Makes Cents! (7th Revised Edition) has been revised to recognise the changes to the new Companies Act introduced in 2011. The main area of change to the Companies Act is that par value shares will be abolished.

"Under the current Companies Act, companies may have shares with a par (or nominal) value, shares of no par value or may be limited by guarantee. In the new legislation, the concept of companies limited by guarantee has disappeared entirely and it is provided that, in future all companies must have shares of no par value. The concept of par value is therefore to be phased out. The rationale for this is that the par value of a share seldom bears any realistic relationship to the actual or market value of that share and, given the relaxation in the historical rules relating to the maintenance of capital, the concept of par value is therefore now irrelevant." (SA Mercantile Law, by James Thomas Riley Gibson, Coenraad J. Visser

While reference is made to companies with par value shares, the main area of company study is around companies with shares of no-par value. This change affects the areas of share issue and financial statements.

"Accounting Makes Cents" (7th Edition) and Tutorials Volume 1 deal with both types of companies – with shares at par value and with shares of no-par value. "Accounting Makes Cents" (7th – Revised -Edition) and Tutorials Vol. 2 concentrates on companies that have shares with no-par value only.

New terminology has also been introduced. The 'Balance sheet' is referred to as the 'Statement of financial position', the 'Income statement' is the 'Statement of comprehensive income' and the 'Cash flow statement' is the 'Statement of cash flows'. This terminology is not implemented carte blanche throughout the text as it is still considered appropriate to refer to the 'Balance sheet' and the 'Income statement' for certain entities including the sole trader, partnerships and sports clubs.

The Revised Edition is more "user-friendly", with page headers, an index and "quick questions" at the end of each chapter.

Written in a simplified style, the step-by-step method of presentation makes the learning process easy for the self-motivated student and for the student studying 'distance learning'.

Basic concepts are introduced through the sole trader as an entity type, and the 'balance sheet' approach is used to introduce business transactions. The company is the main goal of most accounting texts and the text includes the preparation and presentation of financial statements in the detailed format, ratio analysis, share issue, statement of cash flows and statutory reporting.

Business ownership is introduced through the sole trader. The concepts learned here are applied to partnership, close corporation and the company. Various business activity-types include the single-product firm, departments, production concerns and branches.

The various requirements of the Companies Act, GAAP and the IFRS are adhered to throughout the text, however, they are not the dominating requirement when preparing financial statements in the detailed format.

Both "Accounting Makes Cents" 7th Edition and the 7th Revised Edition are accompanied by a complete set of practice exercises (Tutorials Volume 1 and 2). Solutions are also available on CD and in printed format. For educators who prescribe the text at their institution, a CD is available, free of charge, to print overhead projector transparencies.

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