A Practical Guide to Financial Accounting provides a thorough and essential introduction to financial accounting. At first, the concept of financial reporting will be defined. Next, the accounting process and the underlying accounting principles will be discussed. Finally, the different elements of the balance sheet (and relevant links with the income statement) will be addressed in detail.Because different sets of accounting standards co-exist (e.g., IFRS for listed firms versus local standards for non-listed firms), the authors have opted to not rely on one particular set of accounting standards. Instead, they preferred to rely on widely accepted practices across the different standards (and to highlight some of the most relevant differences where applicable). By means of many illustrations and the systematic use of a chart of accounts (and a related balance sheet and income statement), the approach of this textbook is truly practical and hands-on.