How to Read a Balance Sheet: The Bottom Line on What You Need to Know about Cash Flow, Assets, Debt, Equity, Profit...and How It all Comes Together

by Rick Makoujy

Put the most valuable business tool to work for you!The balance sheet is the key to everything--from efficient business operation to accurate assessment of a company’s worth. It’s a critical business resource--but do you know how to read it? How to Read a Balance Sheet breaks down the subject into easy-to-understand components.

If you're a business owner or manager, this book helps you . . .

Manage working capitalGenerate higher returns on assetsMaximize your inventory dollarsEvaluate investment opportunitiesIf you're an investor, this book helps you . . .

Determine the market value of a company's assets and operationsPredict future earnings and trendsAssess the impact of capital expendituresIdentify potential "red flags" before the crowdHow to Read a Balance Sheet gives you the bottom line of what you need to know Cash Flow * Assets * Debt * Equity * Profit and how it all comes together.

Genres: Finance, Nonfiction, Accounting, Business

209 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 19, 2010

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect overview of business finance. Contrary to what the title might indicate, this book doesn't just cover the balance sheet. The income statement and statement of cash flow is also talked about, though the balance sheet anchors most of the underlying discussions. For being such a short book (177 pages) it's jammed packed with information - no sentence is wasted. I really appreciate the way the author uses the same scenario (Jackie's hardware store) to illustrate multiple financial concepts (inventory, depreciation, gross margin, etc.) and most of the hypothetical examples are followed by a real-world example from a large company or even the US government. I'm a little dense sometimes - I need to have a point illustrated from multiple angles to really "get it". In short, I love this book and will always keep it close at hand.

[Dia420071501566 · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice book

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a good starting place, but it wasn't really that illustrative. In trying to be easy to understand it was a bit too simplistic, at least when it came to examples. I would have appreciated the math being done in number-form, and not just explained. I learn either visually or by doing, and having verbal explanations of calculations, even when done only with round numbers, didn't really help. Additionally, it's very dry, and quite honestly, in the version I read, the font was not ideal for what is effectively a text book. I'll still ask my husband to read it, and keep it as a reference, but I'm really going to need a different presentation to make it stick.

[Deepay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simple, basic, can be read quickly. Not bad.