If you're interested in investing, you've probably read quite a few articles that say "do your homework" before buying a stock. Reading and understanding a balance sheet is part of that homework.

A few months ago, we published a column entitled, “Understanding Financials: Your Income Statement.” To re-read that e-column, click here. The balance sheet is another of the financial statements ...

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Charlene Rhinehart is a CPA , CFE, chair of an Illinois CPA Society committee, and has a degree in accounting and finance from DePaul University. As the name implies, a balance sheet should reveal ...

A balance sheet provides a snapshot of a company's assets, liabilities and equity at a specific point in time, while an income statement summarizes its revenues and expenses over a period to show ...

Insurance companies confound many Americans, with costly premiums that often provide no obvious benefit during good times and with difficult processes to follow when you do need to make a claim. Yet ...

A balance sheet is a company's financial big picture for a particular moment in time. Every financial decision a business makes will eventually land on the balance sheet but understanding how the ...

See the affect appraisal capital has on company balance sheets when asset appraisals exceed book values, and explore its ...

Liquidity is often misunderstood and mismeasured, especially when investors rely on global M2 or dollar-converted central bank balance sheets. A more accurate framework focuses on the Federal ...

Some companies find that offering incentives to credit customers can help encourage early payments, increasing cash flow and reducing the risk of bad debt. A sales discount is one incentive that many ...