A supplementary text for a variety of Business courses, including Financial Statement Analysis, Investments, Personal Finance and Financial Planning and Analysis.
Fraser and Ormiston take students behind the financial reports to assess the real financial condition and performance of U.S. companies.
Understanding Financial Statements, retains its reputation for readability, concise coverage and accessibility and gives students the conceptual background and analytical tools necessary to understand and interpret business financial statements. Its ultimate goal is to improve students' ability to translate financial statement numbers into a meaningful map for business decisions and enable each student to approach financial statements with enhanced confidence.

Chapter 1 includes discussions on the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in relation to the auditor’s role, the future accounting rules and financial reporting standards, as the Financial Accounting Standards Board and International Accounting Standards Board work toward a convergence of accounting rules
Chapter 2 explains inventory methods and include the depreciation example, previously used in Chapter 1, where it blends with the discussion of fixed assets
Chapter 3 reflects the recent changes in accounting standards
Chapter 5 contains a checklist for earnings quality and examples for each item on the checklist are included
Problems in writing skills, Internet, research and Intel: The problems in this text are based on the 2007 annual report. The Intel problems specifically, offer the student the opportunity to analyze a real, high-tech company throughout the text
Comprehensive Analysis Problem: At the end of each chapter, problems based on the Eastman Kodak 2007 Form 10-K and Annual Report illustrate how to complete a financial statement analysis using the template available online.
Cases: Up-to-date cases based on real-world companies appear throughout this text