Accounting All-in-One For Dummies

Book V

Reporting on Your Financial Statements

To gauge how profitable an investment is likely to be, visit www.dummies.com/extras/accountingaio for guidance on calculating present and future values.

In this book…

• Use the balance sheet to assess and report the financial condition of a business, as measured by its assets, liabilities, and equity.
• Produce a cash flow statement and summarize changes in stockholders’ equity. Use the cash flow statement to explain how your business raised funds and how it used cash to generate profit. Use the stockholders’ equity report to reveal changes in earnings, dividends, and company ownership.
• Read and interpret financial statements to evaluate a business's financial health. Assess your own business's financial fitness and size up other businesses you're thinking of doing business with.
• Make sense of explanatory notes and disclosures you're likely to find in a corporation's annual financial report. Reading this extra data may change your opinion about the company's plans for growth.
• Pick out valuable pieces of financial information from a company's report to its shareholders. You may find additional disclosures that clarify the company's financial performance.