, Gripping GAAP First edition: 2000
Second edition: 2001
Third edition: 2002
Fourth edition: 2003
Fifth edition: 2004
Sixth edition: 2005
Seventh edition: 2006
Eighth edition: 2007
Ninth edition: 2008
Tenth edition: 2009
Eleventh edition: 2010
Twelfth edition: 2011
Thirteenth edition: 2012
Fourteenth edition: 2013
Fifteenth edition: 2014
Sixteenth edition: 2015
Seventeenth edition: 2016
Eighteenth edition: 2017
Nineteenth edition: 2018
Twentieth edition: 2019
Twenty-first edition: 2020
Twenty-second edition: 2022
Twenty-third edition: 2024
© 2024
ISBN softcover 978 1 776 17758 5
e-book 978 1 776 17765 3
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Disclaimer
This text has been meticulously prepared, but in order for it to be user-friendly, the principles,
application thereof and disclosure requirements have been summarised.
This text should therefore not be used as a substitute for studying, first-hand, the official
International Financial Reporting Standards, including their interpretations.
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, Gripping GAAP
Dedication
This book is once again dedicated to my very dear family and friends!
Writing it would simply not have been possible without
my dear parents, Roger and Jillianne,
who have provided endless love and support, on every level,
during the decades of writing that have gone into this book;
my dear sons, Roger and Guy,
who have been in the front line, providing love, patience, understanding and
endless cups of tea and coffee; and
my dear friend, Dave Kolitz,
for providing the humour and encouragement during writer’s-block, deadlines and other
crises, which as a co-author on another book, only he can understand.
Too numerous to mention, are the rest of my family and friends,
who have all been subjected to the same excuse:
‘Sorry – I can’t – I’m writing …’.
And to my team of guardian angels who not only prompted me to write this book but
who have provided me with the guidance and super-human strength
needed to update it each year.
And finally, I wish to dedicate this book to those for whom I wrote it: You!
I sincerely wish that my book sheds the necessary light as you
fervently study towards your ultimate goal of
joining our country’s ranks of
‘counting mutants’
Our country needs you!
(‘counting mutants’ is a reference to accountants in the quirky comedy:
Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium)
iii
, Gripping GAAP
Foreword
Yet another ‘Four Words’ to Gripping GAAP
My own lifelong – and appalling – inability to accurately distinguish between debits
and credits suggests that (a) I was right not to consider accounting as a career and
(b) I have little credibility – oh, let’s be honest ‘no’ credibility whatsoever – in being
accorded the honour of penning a foreword to ‘Gripping GAAP’. While I dread the
thought that nepotism could be considered a rationale for such distinction (I am
closely related to the authoress!), I have, at least ‘I hope’, established my monstrous
lack of appropriate credentials. However, as a fellow writer (of fiction – and is that so
different from latter-day accounting fact?), I feel qualified to commend the work for its
lucid and clearly understandable (even to me!) ‘unpacking’ of the arcane subject of
accountancy.
A sage of old opined that ‘Money is the root of all evil’ – a maxim which appears to
have stood the test of time. Until recently. Of late, it would appear that the
‘accounting of money’ (on a worldwide basis) has much to answer for. Hitherto
trustworthy multinational financial edifices have been found wanting to an alarming
degree and the aspect of ‘creative accounting’ has been rightly indicted. The vigour
of youth (yours), coupled with a sincere passion to put right was has gone wrong, is
what ‘Gripping GAAP’ seeks to advance.
Balzac said ‘Behind every great fortune there is a crime!’. Was he right? Winston
Churchill said ‘Success is the ability to lurch from failure to failure with no loss of
enthusiasm’. Was he right? Does it matter? Perhaps it does. Certainly my personal
hope is that those who, thousands of years ago, taught us all to read and write with
such fine precision, will now also deal with the new global need to account with
similar exactitude. Carpe diem!
Roger Service Ph.D.
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