Accounting Made Fun & Easy (Paperback)

Paperback. Every few years a company "everyone trusted" turns out to have been cooking its numbers - and ordinary savers, employees, and pension holders lose billions. Every time, people ask the same question: how did nobody see it? The warning signs were in the published accounts - in plain arithmetic - for anyone who knew how to look. This book is where you learn how to look. Who this is for: first-time and long-time investors, stockholders wanting to sanity-check their holdings, employees eyeing company filings, accounting students, small-business owners, and journalists. No experience needed - if you can add and subtract, you can catch the red flags in this book. Accounting Made Fun & Easy: Spot the Cooked Books is the fraud-detection casebook for beginners. You'll shadow one suspect company, Cascade Athletics, across ten chapters, watching its lies pile up - and crack a fresh Case File at the end of each one. By the last chapter, you'll be able to spot: Profit that climbs while the cash quietly drains away - the single most famous red flag there isFake and premature sales: channel stuffing, bill-and-hold, revenue booked before it's realReceivables that pile up but never turn into money (and the one ratio that reveals it)Costs hidden where they don't belong, and "one-time" charges that appear every single yearMargins that drift, and profits smoothed suspiciously flat by "cookie-jar" reservesA one-minute ratio kit that flags a company drowning in debt or unable to pay its billsMade-up numbers - using Benford's Law, the leading-digit trick auditors really useInvestment returns "too smooth to be true" - the math behind every Ponzi schemeHow to run a full three-year audit yourself and deliver an honest verdict - and clear an innocent companyWhere these real numbers live - SEC EDGAR, Companies House, ASIC, SEDAR - and how to pull the filing yourself for freePlus - ten real collapses, decoded, so you don't repeat history. Each "From the Case Files of History" sidebar connects the exact skill you just learned to a real, public-record case: Enron, Luckin Coffee, W.T. Grant, Sunbeam, WorldCom, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff, Charles Ponzi, and Olympus. You'll see the red flag each one hid - and start to recognise the pattern before the next one blows up. (Every case is public record; described for education - never an accusation.) Every chapter ends with a Case File and a full answer key walking the reasoning, not just the number - plus a Red-Flag Field Kit with all ten tells on one spread. This is Book 2 of the Accounting Made Fun & Easy trilogy: Read the Numbers Spot the Cooked Books Don't Get Fooled. Each book stands alone; together they train a complete Numbers Detective. Grab a pencil. Let's spot some cooked books. Plus - 3 free online companion tools. The companion site includes a Ratio Red-Flag Kit, a Benford's-Law Tester, and a Smooth-Returns Detector - no sign-up, no install, nothing you type ever leaves your device. This book was written in collaboration with AI tools. Every worked example, Case File answer, and ratio was independently verified before publication. This book teaches how to spot accounting red flags - not accounting, tax, legal, or investment advice. A red flag is a question, not a verdict; sophisticated frauds have fooled trained professionals. Teaching companies are fictional. For financial decisions, consult a qualified professional. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.…