This textbook integrates financial and managerial accounting as opposed to keeping these areas separate, the approach followed by most books and curriculums. By “integration”, we mean the authors focus on the business process and examine the activities from both an external, financial reporting perspective and an internal, management decision-making perspective. The text incorporates real world applications, including actual financial statements, to reinforce the relevance of topics to real business situations and promote student interest. The text also promotes active learning through Enhance Your Understanding “probing” questions placed sporadically throughout many chapters, Of Interest boxes that provide additional information relating to the chapter concepts, new Fast Fact boxes that provide additional information related to chapter concepts in a short, trivia-like manner, and end-of-chapter group exercises.

There are three key distinctions to the Ainsworth/Deines approach. They are:

1. Integration—described in preceding paragraph.
2. Within the context of business processes, Ainsworth/Deines is organized by planning for activities, performing those activities (in other words, capturing them in the financial statements), and finally, evaluating those business activities.
3. An organization around the Statement of Cash Flows first focusing on Operating Activities (what is my business, my product, who are my customers?) and then Financing and Investing Activities (how do I fund my business, how do I expand, what are the financial risks, etc?).