Lita Epstein

Lita Epstein, who earned her MBA from Emory University's Goizueta Business School, enjoys helping people develop good financial, investing, and tax planning skills. She designs and teaches online courses and has written more than 20 books, including Bookkeeping For Dummies and Reading Financial Reports For Dummies, both published by Wiley.

Articles & Books From Lita Epstein

Cheat Sheet / Updated 07-14-2025
Bookkeepers manage all the financial data for small companies. Accurate and complete financial bookkeeping is crucial to any business owner, as all of a company's functions depend on the bookkeeper’s accurate recording of financial transactions.Bookkeepers are generally entrusted with keeping the Chart of Accounts, the General Ledger, and the company journals, which give details about all financial transactions.
Bookkeeping For Dummies
Concise, easy-to-understand information on every aspect of bookkeeping Bookkeeping For Dummies is a clear guide to tracking transactions, figuring out balance sheets, keeping ledgers or journals, creating financial statements, and operating accounts for businesses. This necessary resource offers relevant, up-to-date tax information and small business laws, so you'll have everything you need to conquer small business bookkeeping tasks.
Article / Updated 07-06-2023
To be a successful trader, you must have good judgment and a solid trading system. Follow the steps in the following list to develop a system that works for you and that reflects your priorities and tolerances. Select system development tools. Gather historical data to test your system. Develop and test your system design.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-17-2023
There are several steps to understanding bookkeeping and maintaining a good record of your business’s finances throughout the year. It’s advantageous to get your head around the trickier bits of keeping the books and to know the process in order to better check and control those incomings and outgoings.Double-entry bookkeepingIn double-entry bookkeeping you enter all transactions in the books twice: once as a debit and once as a credit.
Trading For Dummies
Become a savvy trader and make money in both up and down markets These days, the market is volatile, and you need to know how to ride the waves and navigate the changing tides. Trading For Dummies is for investors in search of a clear guide to trading stocks in any type of market. Inside, you'll get sample stock charts, position trading tips and techniques, and fresh ways to analyze trends and indicators.
Article / Updated 09-15-2022
Financial statement fraud, commonly referred to as "cooking the books," involves deliberately overstating assets, revenues, and profits and/or understating liabilities, expenses, and losses. When a forensic accountant investigates business financial fraud, she looks for red flags or accounting warning signs that indicate suspect business accounting practices.
Reading Financial Reports For Dummies
Your personal roadmap to becoming fluent in financial reports At first glance, the data in financial reports might seem confusing or overwhelming. But, with the right guide at your side, you can learn to translate even the thickest and most complex financial reports into plain English. In Reading Financial Reports For Dummies, you'll move step-by-step through each phase of interpreting and understanding the data in a financial report, learning the key accounting and business fundamentals as you go.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-25-2022
You can find hundreds of books on technical analysis and using stock charts to make trading and investing decisions, but if you don't know how to properly build those charts, the information in them may be garbage. Stock Charts For Dummies helps you develop your own charting style to match your own trading and investing style.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-16-2022
If you're looking at a business with an interest in investing in it, you need to read its financial reports. Of course, when it comes to the annual report, you don't need to read everything, just the key parts.Combining the annual report with some of the financial reports a corporation files with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can help you figure profitability and liquidity ratios and get a better sense of cash flow.
Article / Updated 07-06-2021
If you decide you want to trade for others as well as for yourself, you need to become a registered representative. The most comprehensive test you can take is the FINRA’s Series 7 exam. To qualify for the test, you’ll need a sponsoring broker.When you sign up for the required coursework for this exam, either through self-study courses online or a nearby training school, the school can help you locate a sponsoring broker if you don’t have one.