This book is an introductory financial accounting textbook. It is designed for use in business administration courses at undergraduate and graduate levels which are offered by European universities and business schools. The book is directed at future managers and finance professionals. The aim is to help them understand and interpret the accounts which companies issue each year. The structure of the book reflects this goal. It has three parts following the introductory chapter: Part 1 ‘Foundations’ (Chapters 2–6) introduces the main financial statements and the terms in them. It also shows where the numbers in them come from. It explains briefly the process by which transactions are recorded and summarised in financial statements. Certain accounting fallacies are exposed. Part 2 ‘The House of Accounting’ (Chapters 7–17) considers in more depth the components of the financial statements: the assets and liabilities that appear on the balance sheet; the revenues and expenses, gains and losses that constitute the income statement. It shows how the accounting policies a company follows affect the numbers in the statements – and thus the financial ratios derived from them. How investors analyse financial statements is the subject matter of Part 3 ‘Perspectives’ (Chapters 18–20). Widely used measures of performance such as earnings and cash flow are explored at length.