The Business Owner's Guide to Reading and Understanding Financial Statements: How to Budget, Forecast, and Monitor Cash Flow for Better Decision Making

by Lita Epstein

Financial statements hold the key to a company's fiscal health―so learn to read them! In order to gauge a company's health―as well as the competition's―managers must know how to properly read and understand financial statements. The Business Owner's Guide to Reading and Understanding Financial Statements will introduce managers and business owners to various types of financial statements and explain why they are important. Serving as a desktop reference, especially for managers without a strong background in finance, this book will discuss the difference between internal and external financial statements and explain how they can be used for financial decision-making in order to avoid common missteps. Whether you're planning for major capital projects or simply managing the fiscal aspects of your department, this nontechnical, results-driven guide will arm you with the fundamentals Financial statements are essential to determining a company's fiscal health. Understand where your company stands so that you can make informed decisions about its future.

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2011

Reviews

[Alex Cotterill · Rating 3 out of 5]

helpful book and good explanations; used OU material alongside this for my OU course on finance. Covers a lot of material but unfortunately not everything on my course is in here!

[Olivier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un livre qui vulgarise bien. Assez complet. Il manque par contre des exemples et des rapports complet pour bien visualiser ce qui est dit. Point de vue investisseur, il manque aussi plusieurs indicateurs importants à mon avis. Mais je ne suis pas un spécialiste. En même temps le livre est plus fait pour le patron d'un business que pour les investisseurs.

[Mohammed Uddin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Includes essential information

Every chapter is explained in a nice way except the last chapter in which I am not satisfied with the ratio calculation. Credit purchases should be used rather than Cost of goods sold in the numerator while calculating payable turnover ratio. COGS can include cash purchases also . This is because, in the case of receivables, we use the term credit sales divided by average A / R. Same logic goes for payables also .

[Svetlana Kva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty basic but comprehensive and simple (mostly plain English) guide, considering to use with some small business clients