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Accounting and Finance for Non-Specialists, 13th edition

Published by Pearson (May 7, 2025) © 2025

  • Peter Atrill University of Plymouth Business School
  • Eddie McLaney

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Title overview

Become familiar with the essential accounting and finance principles for business decision-making.

Accounting and Finance for Non-Specialists 13th Edition is a reader-friendly introduction to the subject, covering techniques widely used in financial accounting, management accounting, and financial management.

This useful guide will help you explore the elements of the principal financial statements and learn the importance of accounting and finance in decision-making, from theory to practice, with a range of real-world examples.

The activities and exercises will allow you to grow your understanding of the field, providing a solid foundation for your future career in business.

Hallmark Features in This Edition

A clear introduction to the key principles of accounting & finance.

  • Explains the roles of accounting and finance in business decision-making step-by-step, covering widely used techniques.
  • Combines financial accounting, management accounting, and financial management.
  • Focuses on decision-making to prepare your students for a career in business.

Provides relevant, real-life understanding of concepts

  • Expanded with more Real World examples in this edition to help students make sense of real accounting issues
  • Activities and exercises help students consolidate the main concepts, apply their learning and develop critical thinking.

User-friendly structure

  • Learning outcomes at the beginning of each chapter highlight the key areas.
  • End-of-chapter summaries help students revise the topics.

"Highly recommended. The book comprehensively covers traditional and emerging concepts, simplifies complex financial topics, and provides practical examples, making it accessible for students without a finance background."

- Dr. Elmira Partovi, Senior Lecturer, Business and Law School, University of the West of England

"I recommend Accounting & Finance for Non-Specialists for its clear explanations and practical examples. It demystifies complex concepts, makes financial principles accessible, and is an invaluable read for non-specialists."

- Joan Ballantine, Professor of Accounting, Ulster University Business School

New and updated features of this title

Up-to-date content coverage, reflecting the latest international rules relating to the main financial statements.

Arresting new scenarios as applied in updated, real-world examples, help students understand the business environment. These examples now include well-known businesses and organisations such as Hewlett-Packard, Aston Martin, WH Smith, ASOS, and Cineworld.

A new set of multiple-choice questions, added to the end of every chapter, will help students revise and check their understanding in their self-study time.

Revised activities integrated throughout the book provide excellent opportunities to test students' knowledge in core ideas, supporting the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Digital features

Features of Pearson eTextbook for the 13th Edition

Accounting and Finance for Non-Specialists 13th edition is a complete guide that equips students with a solid foundation in the principles and practice of accounting and finance, thereby laying the groundwork necessary to make successful business decisions in their careers.The eTextbook is a practical, digital eBook format allowing many features not possible with previous editions:

Extend learning beyond the classroom with Pearson eTextbook - an easy-to-use digital textbook.

Optimise study time

  • Find it fast. Enhanced search makes it easy to find a key term or topic to study. Students can also search for interactive content such as videos, images, and any notes they've created.
  • Get organised and get results. Students can customise how they study and add their own notes, bookmarks, and highlights directly in their eTextbook.
  • Reinforce and revise learning. Students can create their own or use pre-built flashcards to support recall and exam preparation.

Meet students where they are

  • Study on or offline. With the Pearson+ app, you and your students can access your eTextbook anytime, anywhere.
  • Listen anywhere. Learners can listen to the audio version of their eTextbook, making learning even more flexible.
  • NEW translation feature - users can select a word, phrase, or passage and translate it to a language of their choosing (over 100 languages).
  • Watch and interact via videos embedded in the chapters, bringing tricky concepts to life.

Find out more about Pearson eTextbooks.

Features of MyLab® Accounting for the 13th Edition.

There are over 1600 exercises and questions of various forms in MyLab® that can be selected and assigned for quizzes, formative or summative work, helping you test your students' performance in a variety of different ways.

  • Teach your course your way: Integrate MyLab seamlessly into your virtual learning environment and create a course that fits your needs. MyLab gives you a great level of flexibility to build your own quizzes and assignments, direct self-study, track student performance, and more.
  • NEW! Dynamic Study Modules provide an adaptive experience, allowing students to try, fail and learn where they went wrong, and retry.
  • NEW! New-look interactive homework assignments are available for you to use or adapt, each one containing short readings, videos showing walk-throughs of accounting problems, and exercises relating to the topic. Engagement with each element is tracked, allowing you to pick up any students falling behind.
  • EXPANDED: Additional algorithmic questions have been created to prevent cheating, so each student works on a numerical problem individual to them.
  • EXPANDED: 17 short explanatory videos covering key concepts in financial and management accounting can be viewed by students to help consolidate concepts learned in class. Videos have also been added in the incorrect answer feedback for students to review.
  • NEW! Workplace Scenarios have been introduced - an assignment that mimics real life scenarios to prepare students for their careers. Each scenario requires students to view a mock business meeting and then submit a report with their recommendations.
  • Case Studies in MyLab Accounting help students link theory with its application in real-world decision-making.
  • Accounting in Action: An extended scenario encourages your students to consider and apply accounting principles as part of a single narrative, providing business context to decisions they will need to make in the real world.

Enhance student learning with MyLab® Accounting.

Table of contents

Preface

  1. Introduction to accounting and finance

Part One FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING

  1. Measuring and reporting financial position
  2. Measuring and reporting financial performance
  3. Accounting for limited companies
  4. Measuring and reporting cash flows
  5. Analysing and interpreting financial statements

Part Two MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING

  1. The relevance and behaviour of costs
  2. Full costing
  3. Budgeting

Part Three FINANCE

  1. Making capital investment decisions
  2. Financing a business
  3. Managing working capital

Glossary

Appendix A: Solutions to self-assessment questions

Appendix B: Solutions to critical review questions

Appendix C: Solutions to multiple choice questions

Appendix D: Solutions to exercises

Appendix E: Present value table

Index

Acknowledgements

Author bios

Peter Atrill is a freelance academic and author who has worked with leading institutions in the UK, Europe and South-East Asia. As well as working as a business consultant, he was previously Head of Business and Management and Head of Accounting and Law at Plymouth Business School.

Eddie McLaney is an academic author with many years' experience of teaching Accounting and Finance. He was formerly the Accounting Subject Group Leader and Principal Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at Plymouth Business School.

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Pearson eText

Extend learning beyond the classroom. Pearson eText is an easy-to-use digital textbook. It lets students customise how they study and learn with enhanced search and the ability to create flashcards, highlight and add notes all in one place. The mobile app lets students learn wherever life takes them, offline or online.

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