Understanding and Interpreting Company Accounts

Book excerpt: Understanding and Interpreting Accounts is designed for those with no formal training in accounting who need to know what company accounts can reveal. Using non-technical terms to explain the concepts, it identifies the links between individual parts of the accounts in order to facilitate the analysis and prediction of company performance. The reader will rapidly gain sufficient understanding of the information held in the accounts for the purposes of commercial credit analysis, investment planning, business forecasting, managing a business, and many other similar activities. It is the product of many years' experience in teaching the interpretation of accounts to students on MBA courses with no previous background in accounting. Its simple but thorough approach will be of value to anyone - student, professional, manager or investor -- who needs a basic introduction to analysing accounts and the process of mining them for practical information.