How to Read Financial Statements: A Beginners Guide

balance sheets for dummies

Some candidates may qualify for scholarships or financial aid, which will be credited against the Program Fee once eligibility is determined. Please refer to the Payment & Financial Aid page for further information. After you’ve identified your reporting date and period, you’ll need to tally your assets as of that date. It’s not uncommon for a balance sheet to take a few weeks to prepare after the reporting period has ended. Assets can be further broken down into current assets and non-current assets.

balance sheets for dummies

Accounts Payables, or AP, is the amount a company owes suppliers for items or services purchased on credit. As the company pays off its AP, it decreases along with an equal amount decrease to the cash account. The liabilities section of the balance sheet contains the liability accounts of the business. These are the obligations of the business to outside parties that arise from usual business operations and financing activities. This section is also divided into two subsections – Current Liabilities and Non-Current Liabilities. Continuing with the accounts receivable example, the quality of receivables can often be found in the notes to the balance sheet, which breaks down the receivables by age and credit quality.

What Is Included in the Balance Sheet?

Do you want to learn more about what’s behind the numbers on financial statements? Explore our finance and accounting courses to find out how you can develop an intuitive knowledge of financial principles and statements to unlock critical insights into performance and potential. If you’ve found that your balance sheet doesn’t balance, there’s likely a problem with some of the accounting data you’ve relied on. Double check that all of your entries are, in fact, correct and accurate.

balance sheets for dummies

Verifying that these numbers match allows you to confirm that the data in your balance sheet is correct. When investors ask for a balance sheet, they want to make sure it’s accurate to the current time period. It’s important to keep accurate balance sheets regularly for this reason. This is the value of funds that shareholders have invested in the company.

Compare total assets against liability and equity.

If your results show that, say, there’s a significant percent decrease in your company’s cash, you might be experiencing financial problems. Toggl’s balance sheet template gives an overview of your balances in one single view. It also has pre-set items for current assets, fixed assets, current liabilities, and long-term liabilities so, you won’t have to add them balance sheets for dummies in yourself. Balance sheets allow the user to get an at-a-glance view of the assets and liabilities of the company. In this example, Apple’s total assets of $323.8 billion is segregated towards the top of the report. This asset section is broken into current assets and non-current assets, and each of these categories is broken into more specific accounts.

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