  We have calculated the temperature and density structure of the hot postshock
plasma in magnetically confined accretion flows, including the gravitational
potential. This avoids the inconsistency of previous calculations which assume
that the height of the shock is negligible. We assume a stratified accretion
column with 1-d flow along the symmetry axis. We find that the calculations
predict a lower shock temperature than previous calculations, with a flatter
temperature profile with height. We have revised previous determinations of the
masses of the white dwarf primary stars and find that for higher mass white
dwarfs there is a general reduction in derived masses when the gravitational
potential is included. This is because the spectrum from such flows is harder
than that of previous prescriptions at intermediate energies.
