Are Your Financial Statements Leading You Down a Disastrous Path (And You Don 't Even Realize It)? If 75% of the value of your business in NOT reflected on your financial statements, how valid is the analysis that the accountant gave you?
After 30 years of being a CPA and preparing, reviewing, auditing, evaluating, analyzing and comparing financial statements, the sad truth is this:
TRADITIONAL FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CAN OFTEN MISLEAD YOU AND THEY CAN TAKE YOU DOWN A DISASTROUS PATH.
The problem is that business owners often don 't realize the limitations. Even fewer of them know how to overcome the shortcomings of traditional financial statements. Below are the summarized and simplified financial information for two companies.
Revenue
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So how valid is the business analysis that the accountant gave you about how you are going?
"More than 75% of the average firm 's market value is derived from intangible assets that traditional financial metrics don 't capture... firms can 't manage what they can 't measure." --Strategy Maps by Kaplan and Norton
So you can forget about what is on your balance sheet for now. The real value of your business is not reflected there. The most important asset your company possesses is its Customer Asset.
Customer Asset (CA) =Total lifetime value of all of your current customers.
If you were to sell your company, the buyer would perform an analysis of the true value of your business. This would be a detailed analysis of the CA. Isn 't it logical that you should have the same value focus as would a potential buyer? You need to know where the value is in your business. Once you have that knowledge, you can use it to improve the value of your business.
I see so many business owners who sell their business at X value, and if they had made a few strategic improvements to increase their CA, they could have received a 2 to 4+ times higher value for their business than they did receive.
There are hundreds of factors that can increase your CA. Many times they boil down to a few key factors. Even a small deterioration in a few important factors, when left unnoticed and unchecked, can accumulate into devastating
In accounting there is much to be learned, about the financial aspects of a business. In the past five weeks I have learned the importance of financial reports and how they relate to the success of an establishment. These reports may include balance sheets and income statements, which help accountants and the public grasp the overall financial condition of a company. The information in these reports is really significant to, managers, owners, employees, and investors. Managers of a business can take and deduce financial
Fraser, L. M., & Ormiston, A. (201). Understanding financial statements (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
After reviewing the Balance sheet I have a concern regarding the Current and short term liabilities. Creditors/ trade payable is payment yet to be made for goods already received, if this continues to rise then it will effect the business profit and less stock will have to be ordered so repayments can be made. Bank overdrafts also continued to rise and in the long-term the business will be paying greater interest, which will again eat into the profit. Both increased quite a great deal from the last year-end. If this continues then the business will get into bad debts and owe too much that it will end up having to sale its assets to survive. Finally I can see that due to the above issues and other issues the net current assets/ working capital has decreased so therefore the business is less value then it was a year ago. If the business is worth £1 million now, this could soon decrease within another year.
BALANCE SHEET |Dec 1990 |Jan |Feb |Mar |Apr |May |June |July |Aug |Sept |Oct |Nov |Dec | |Cash |175 |556 |724 |175 |175 |175 |175 |175 |175 |175 |175 |175 |175 | |Accts receivable |2,628 |958 |234 |271 |270 |250 |250 |270 |1,603 |3,113 |3,580 |3,982 |3.063 | |Inventory |530 |948 |1,355 |1,749 |2,157 |2,564 |2,971 |3,365 |2,904 |2.314 |1,549 |697 |530 | |Net P/E |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 |1,070 | |Total Assets |4,403 |3,533 |3,383 |3,265 |3,672 |4,059 |4,466
Some individuals assume that the usefulness of financial statements is to predict the future of a business with data from the past. Sometimes this can be true in respect for trends that have continued for many years, for at least the near future. The fact is financial
The balance sheet (BS) is significant to a business due to its ability to provide a “snapshot” of a company’s assets and liabilities at any given time. This financial document is a cursory representation of a business’s health. The use of comparative BS whether it be yearly, quarterly, or monthly provides the interested parties a tool to observe trends that are positive, negative, or neutral to a company’s financial health (Finkler, Jones, and Koyner,2013) .
Understanding the finances of a company is important but knowing the significance of the financial statements is crucial to the operations as well. Reviewing the statement of financial position, operating statement and statement of cash flows serve as a guidance to management and executives on the day-to-day activities of an organization (Finkler et al., 2013). For example, the statement of financial position (balance sheet) shows the assets and
The financial crisis of the early 2000s left many investors and stockholders nervous about the accuracy of financial statements issued by public companies. The financial crisis resulted after many previously successful companies suddenly tanked due to restatement of their financials. These companies include Enron, Tyco, Sunbeam, Rite-Aid, Xerox and WorldCom amongst others (Kieso, 2014, p. 17). How could many previously successful companies suddenly go belly-up? The evidence was to be seen, these companies had used malicious accounting techniques to hide massive amounts of debts and increase their assets without having to show them accurately in a fair and honest way on their financial statements.
Among the tools required for every business to survive and thrive, the ability to maintain a regular self-examination holds an indispensable place. The size of the business in question is almost of no consequence, only the potential complexity of the self-examination changes. A prime tool for such self-examinations is the family of related financial reporting that has become nearly universal in western businesses: the income statement, the balance sheet, and the statement of cash flows. This trio of reports enables management and owners to carefully examine the holdings and liabilities of their business so they may make
While inaccurate accounting can cause misleading information about the company, every successful company should develop an income statement and balance sheet when monitoring financial growth. Also, formulating a horizontal and ratio analysis creates an accurate trend of the company spending behavior and debt-to-ratio venerability. A balance sheet can be considered as the bloodline of the company, allowing a quick view of financial fluency which could be attractive to outside investors. Last but not least, the income statement presents a hard result of gains, liabilities, revenues and debt within a yearly
I agree with Kevin’s statement that financial statements provide only a partial look at the picture when valuing a company. While providing the financial data such as sales, expenses, gross profit, total assets and liabilities, and net worth it leaves out the internal influences that most influence the bottom line.
Financial statements of the company are significant for the investors who would like to venture into the business operation. It gives them the insight whether the business is making profits or it is doomed to fail;
Each user of the financial statements interprets the information in a different manor. They use the information to determine their interactions with the organization. Management, investors, and employees use the same information from the financial statements but for different purposes. These four basic statements are the fundamentals of accounting which can be much more detail and complex. They do not need to be more complex for the users of the information; these basic statements have all the information needed to make
Financial Statements basically show the historical performance or record of the company at some previous point of time. By the time when financial statements are made public, changes are many economical areas such as market conditions, currency exchange rate and inflations can change the values of assets and liabilities. In this case there often exist discrepancies between book value of assets and their market values.
The financial statements are very useful to all this group of user. Explain each of them;