Simple Financial Statements for Small Business

So, you are running your small business. It takes a lot of time and effort to market and retain customers. You may spend hours promoting your blog or website. There are products to ship, inventory to purchase and bills to pay. Why are financial statements necessary? There is money in your bank, so you know your making some.

Financial statements show the health of your business. Financial statements are made up of a Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and a Cash Flow Statement. The Balance Sheet shows your assets, what you own, and Liabilities, what you owe. The Income Statement gives you monthly and year-to-date information on Sales, Cost of Product or Service, and the expenses incurred in operating your business. The Cash Flow Statement shows where the money went.

Instead of throwing your receipts into a box or drawer, and paying your accountant to sort these out at tax time, save yourself some money and begin simple methods of keeping track yourself. You can purchase accounting software, such as QuickBooks, which is very easy to use and does a lot of the work for you. Or, you can set up a spreadsheet to track sales, costs and expenses. You can even use a notebook to write these down. Whichever method you choose, it will help you make sure you are being paid by all your customers, and paying your expenses on time. QuickBooks even does payroll, so you don’t have to figure this by hand.

To get a better understanding of financial statement concepts, and how to prepare them, please refer to my article “How to Prepare Financial Statements”. http://www.helium.com/items/1500362-making-financial-statements

This will give you step-by-step instructions on preparing the Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow Statement. It also explains what makes up the items on each financial statement, and how they relate.