Revisions for Fundamental Financial Accounting Concepts are in response to extensive feedback from instructors and students. Through formal reviews, instructor and student comments and suggestions, and focus groups, we have responded with beneficial and constructive changes. The detailed revisions are summarized below. However, there are three significant features.

Annual Report Projects
Two annual reports accompany the text.

• The 2003 annual report for Harley-Davidson, Inc. is packaged separately with the text.
• The 2003 annual report for The Topps Company, Inc. is printed in Appendix B.

In the Annual Report and Financial Statement Analysis Projects section (Appendix D) projects for each of these companies are included as well as a general purpose annual report project instructors can assign for any company's annual report.

Comprehensive Problem to Integrate Concepts Across Chapters
Chapters 5 through 11 include a comprehensive problem designed to integrate concepts across chapters. These problems help students understand interrelationships between various accounting concepts. The problem builds in each successive chapter, with the ending account balances in one chapter becoming the beginning account balances in the next chapter.

User-Friendly Writing Style
Every chapter of the text has been completely rewritten in an easy to read and easy to comprehend writing style. The revised, student-friendly writing style is designed to encourage students to read the book.

Overall revisions

• The presentation of material has been simplified.
• We have expanded coverage of the matching concept throughout the text.
• The text has been thoroughly updated to include all relevant changes in authoritative pronouncements.
• The exercises and problems have been thoroughly revised.
• Financial statement analysis is highlighted in each chapter under the heading The Financial Analyst .
• All real world data have been updated to reflect information contained in the companies' most recent annual reports.
• There is an ethics case in the Analyze, Think, Communicate section of the end-of-chapter materials for each chapter.
• Check figures are added to Problems in Series A.

Chapter specific changes

Chapter 1

• Curious Accountant vignette now features Coca-Cola Company.
• Coverage of the closing process and the vertical statements model moved from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2.

Chapter 2

• Curious Accountant vignette features Union Pacific Railroad.
• Coverage of the closing process and the vertical statements model moved from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2.
• We have included coverage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
• New Reality Bytes on Enron Corporation.

Chapter 3

• Revised end-of-chapter material.

Chapter 4

• Change of title from The Recording Process to The Double-Entry Accounting System.
• We have included coverage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
• New Exhibit 4-8.
• New Reality Bytes on filing Form 8-K with the SEC related to American Airlines and September 11 World Trade Center attacks.

Chapter 5

• We have changed the coverage of cash discounts from the gross method to the net method. While most texts use the gross method, the net method is more intuitive and theoretically preferable, not to mention that it is the method used more frequently in practice.
• We have moved coverage of the periodic method to the appendix. As a result of advances in technology, the perpetual method is the dominate approach used in practice today.

Chapter 6

• Formerly chapter 8
• Chapter 5 is now followed immediately by coverage of advanced inventory topics (cost flow methods, lower of cost or market, and inventory errors). This change facilitates the growing practice of covering these two subjects back-to-back.
• Innocent inventory errors that are material in amount are highly unlikely in today's business environment. We have changed the write-up on inventory errors so as to couch the subject in terms of fraud prevention.

Chapter 7

• Formerly chapter 6
• Curious Accountant vignette now features WorldCom.

Chapter 8

• Formerly chapter 7
• Change in title from Advanced Topics: Receivables and Payables to Advanced Topics Related to Receivables.
• Curious Accountant now features Costco and Procter and Gamble.
• Coverage of accounting for discount notes moved to the appendix. Reviewers suggested that this subject is too technical for most professors to cover in an introductory accounting course.

Chapter 9

• New Reality Byes on Hewlett-Packard Company and Compaq Computer Corporation.

Chapter 10

• Curious Accountant now features Time Warner.

Chapter 11

• New Realty Bytes on Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Chapter 12

• Updated Priceline Exhibit 12-3.

New Appendix B Topps Company Annual Report

New Appendix C Summary of Financial Ratios

New Appendix D Annual Report and Financial Statement Analysis Projects