February Book Review: Understanding Business Valuation and Wiley Advantage Audit

February Book Review: Understanding Business Valuation and Wiley Advantage Audit

Understanding Business Valuation: A Practical Guide to Valuing Small to Medium Sized Businesses, Fourth Edition by Gary R. Trugman. Published by AICPA.

garytrugman-4theditionGary Trugman’s book should be a standard in every accountant’s office that performs or wants to do business valuations. This is a complete treatise on valuations with careful understandable explanations, examples, samples and illustrations that any person performing valuations could benefit from.

I read the book completely when it was originally published using it to study for the AICPA exam to become Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) and eagerly purchased each new edition using it as a perpetual reference source. I also know Gary, and his wife Linda, and heard them speak many times and always walked away feeling the time was well spent. He writes the way he talks and he really knows the area.

The book is well documented with citations making it easy to go to original sources further increasing the book’s value. A CD-ROM is included with sample reports, complete text of revenue rulings and a listing and citations for all major valuation cases. This 1100+ page book and is great and I hate to write such a short review, but it is Gary’s treat for his colleagues and all I would be adding is more accolades. The book is not expensive and given its size and content it is a fantastic bargain. Whether or not you do valuations, this is a reference book that can provide great insight into how business are valued and what can add or reduce value.

If you perform or review valuations, discuss how businesses are valued or what they are worth, or work with small to medium sized businesses in any manner, this book belongs in your office. Buy it!


Wiley Advantage Audit, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

checklistI love checklists, but some are not relevant, too long, too wordy, not clear or have too many cross references. I always seek out shorter, easy to use checklists and Wiley’s Advantage Audit fits that criteria.

Advantage Audit is written for the busy experienced professional who knows what he or she is doing. It is not for inexperienced staff. It has custom checklists for the more popular industries and is a user friendly tool that can help you improve the quality of your audits, reviews and compilations and not spend unnecessary time. Using the checklists, you can use the provided insights to guide you toward a better examination and report. It also has a planning booklet with sample compliance forms, engagement and representation letters and confirmations.

A full and current list of audit guides and programs can be seen at www.AdvantageAudit.com. One word of personal disclosure is that I am friends with, and have done peer reviews of Mark Lilling’s practice, the creator of this product (who sold it to Wiley) and members of WithumSmith+Brown are the current authors and technical reviewers for Wiley. I chose to review it before I knew of my firm’s involvement, but that in no way affected my comments. If I did not like it, I would simply not review it here. But I like it and recommend it to those falling into the description I gave above of who should use it. There are other programs that are more widely used or better known and I am not recommending this instead of the others. I like this product, and as with all products accountants will use extensively, I suggest it be reviewed and checked out along with the others before you make a decision.

If you are thinking of switching to it, I suggest you speak with your peer or quality reviewer beforehand to see if he or she has any thoughts about this or any other product you will switch to. You should use your peer reviewer as a resource and not hesitate to consult with them. I have been a team captain and performed reviews of over 60 practices and was such a resource for them, as was the reviewer of my practice to me before I merged my practice and stopped performing quality reviews.

This is a thorough easy to use product and can be an effective part of your work process as you perform your audits, reviews or compilations. Check it out. It is a good product.

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