As someone who recently used the Principal Account Clerk Passbook to study for my civil service exam, I have some mixed feelings. On one hand, it's incredibly hard to find dedicated study materials for these niche tests, so I was thrilled to get this at a reasonable price.

The book's strongest point is its clear summary of bookkeeping terms - this section alone helped me grasp concepts that other resources explained poorly. I found myself constantly referring back to these definitions during my study sessions.

However, the quality issues are real. The handwritten charts look like they were photocopied from someone's notebook, and some pages have missing text that makes certain questions unanswerable. I had to skip about 10% of the practice problems because of this.

The most frustrating aspect? The answer key provides zero explanations. When I got questions wrong (which happened often), there was no way to understand why or learn from mistakes. This forced me to spend extra time researching concepts elsewhere.

Despite its flaws, I can't deny it helped - I scored in the top 3 on my exam! But be prepared to supplement with other resources when the Passbook falls short.