Reviews the book "Standard Handbook for Accountants."

The article discusses about the achievement of success in Certified Public Accountant examination. In raising the question of academic background, the candidate will find general agreement on the desirability of a full academic course leading to a college degree. However, he will encounter conflicting views with respect to the nature and the extent of the college work to be undertaken. The study covers those students who sat for the CPA examination immediately after completing a four-year academic program that included courses in a "field of concentration" directed to professional public accounting. The course offers a review of contemporary accounting theory with emphasis upon the pronouncements of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the American Accounting Association. During the course of study the student works some fifty to sixty problems taken from the accounting practice parts of past CPA examinations. The course aims to provide students with a full appreciation of the framework of contemporary theory and the ability to solve practical problems within this framework. Those persons with high accounting aptitude who achieve a superior accounting record in a four-year college program composed of liberal arts, business, and accounting studies similar to that described, can look forward to high achievement on the CPA examination taken immediately upon the completion of academic studies.

In determining how cash is to be divided among partners, the conventional accounting approach is to regard any distributable cash as though it were the last to be made available to partners. This involves the assumptions that all remaining assets are worthless and will emerge as a complete loss, and, that any presently deficient partners or partners who may become deficient as a result of the loss of all remaining assets will be unable to meet their indebtedness to the firm, such deficiencies requiring absorption by remaining solvent partners. A schedule should be prepared which involves a recognition of partners' present equities and the portions of the equities that must be restricted to absorb the charges occasioned by a loss on remaining assets and the charges emerging from any capital deficiencies. The maximum loss that each partner can absorb in terms of his present respective equity in the firm must first be calculated. As cash is to become available, it should be applied in a manner that will bring the partners' equities ever closer to the point where they can absorb the same loss.

Reviews the book "Accounting: A Management Approach," by Ronald H. Robnett, Thomas H. Hill and John A. Beckett.

In the area of consolidated statements, as perhaps in no other, there is the danger that the student will place full reliance upon working papers, elimination patterns, and technical procedures as demonstrated in the classroom and textbook in achieving a set of answers. If the student simply applies mechanical techniques, without thinking of the consolidation framework set by the past or the frame-work to be provided for the future, he will be unable to offer any theoretical support for his conclusions and will not possess any real confidence in them. Even worse, if the student leaves the matter at this stage, be may feel that certain areas in accounting are beyond his grasp, and may thus develop a basic insecurity. The possibility of any such insecurity can be avoided by the careful presentation of this subject matter.