Financial statements and accounting systems

All businesses need a system of recording transactions and of presenting

them in a coherent way which is widely understandable. The fundamental

business model, introduced in Chapter 2 and reproduced here as

Figure 4.1, shows the fl ow of transactions round the business.

The underlying transactions can be grouped into four categories as set

out in Table 4.1. The two columns split transactions according to whether

they involve money coming into the business or money going out of the

business. The two rows are split according to whether the effect of the

transaction has either a future or a current impact.

These categories provide the basis for the three core statements that

make up a set of accounts:

_ Balance sheet. A snapshot of the business showing the assets

owned, the liabilities owed and the money put in by investors.

A balance sheet represents the items that will provide a future

benefi t or have a future claim on the business.

The fundamental business model

_ Income (or profi t and loss) statement. A trading statement that

summarises the revenue earned and the costs incurred for a

period. The costs comprise all the items that have been consumed

or have been spent in earning the revenue. For example, the cost of

telephone calls would be shown as a cost in the income statement

as the benefi t is derived at the time they are made and there is no

future benefi t to be derived. However, the purchase of telephone

equipment such as a handset is an asset that will appear on the

balance sheet as the business will be able to continue deriving

benefi t from this equipment in the future.

_ Cash fl ow. A summary of the cash received and paid for a period.

This is effectively a summarised bank statement showing money

in and money out.

As shown in Figure 4.2 on the next page, the balance sheet is a

statement at a point in time whereas the income statement and cash fl ow


 

summarise the activity over a period of time (typically a month or year).

The priorities of three crucial items on these statements can be summarised

by the adage that:

_ Revenue is vanity

_ Profi t is sanity

_ Cash is reality

Thus revenue that does not generate a profi t or provide a basis for

earning future profi t (a loss leader) may fl atter a business in terms of

growth but generates no shareholder value. Profi t that has been earned

but is tied up in receivables cannot be reinvested until it is turned into

cash. Without cash a business cannot survive in the longer term.

The statements in practice

To illustrate the construction of the three statements, take an example of

a door-to-door salesman who sets up a cleaning products business with

$500. He goes to a wholesaler and buys 200 dusters for $2 each and a

holdall for $50. After a hard day on the road, spending $20 on bus fares

and fi nding only a few customers, he has sold 50 of the dusters for $5

each. At the end of the fi rst day he has a lot of dusters left, some cash and

some used bus tickets. Has it been a successful day?

The balance sheet – day 1

Adding up the items in his possession at the end of the day that have

a future benefi t for the next day and beyond, he would produce the

following.

Holdall $50

Inventory $300 150 dusters at cost of $2 each

Cash $280 Analysed in the cash fl ow

Total assets $630

 

 






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