Analyzing financial statements is an indispensable insight for managers

[Adam Fleming]

Financial statements are the ultimate indicator of a company’s financial health. Number crunching is a very important exercise that all executives at all levels of an organization need to be familiar with. Yet, given the heavy jargon that goes into financial statements and the complexity most of them have; many managers feel put off and don’t generally like to pore over financial statements.

The company’s financial statement is intended to provide insights into the most important aspect of the business –the financial one –to managers and executives at all levels and in all disciplines. Marketing, finance, HR, customer service, and sales need financial statements to get a grasp of and gain perspective of the financial health of the organization.

Financial statements are critical for helping understand the business

Despite financial statements being the surest indicator of the most important aspect of any business organization –Finance –most managers lack the perceptiveness needed to understand and analyze the meaning of numbers. It is often that they devote some much time to running their business that the priority that needs to be accorded to understanding financial statements gets buried and takes a backseat.

A perceptive analysis of financial statements is the foundation to getting the business in order. Wading through the numbers helps the organization to dig into the market trends, understand where they are getting it right or wrong, and then use financial statements to draw proper conclusions and take appropriate action. It is important to understand financial statements for another critical reason: The competition should not understand our financial statements faster and better than we do!

Trend and ration analysis of financial statements

But how does one make sense of heaps and heaps of seemingly unintelligible numbers? Numbers in themselves, without the necessary nous to decipher them, make little sense to any executive. A few techniques do exist to help understand the meaning of numbers. An effective model for assessing the financial condition and results of operations of any business is that of using trend and ratio analysis. Getting a grasp of this model will empower financial and other executive teams to derive the maximum benefit that accrues from a crystal clear understanding of financial statements.

Imparting this understanding is the intent of a webinar that is being organized by Compliance4All, a leading provider of professional trainings for all areas of regulatory compliance. Miles Hutchinson, an experienced CGMA and business adviser, will be the speaker at this session.

In easily comprehensible terms, he will explain how participants can imbibe the sagacity needed to quickly and thoroughly analyze the financial condition and results of operations of any publicly traded company. All that is needed to gain this highly useful understanding of financial statements is to register for this webinar by logging on to http://www.compliance4all.com/control/w_product/~product_id=501197L...

Attending this highly useful session on financial statements gives Financial Executives, HR Managers, Accounting Managers, Department Managers, and Business Unit Managers the ability to discern numbers and help understand where these numbers lead the organization to.

These are the areas this webinar on financial statements will cover:

o  Review the components of the annual report of a prominent publicly traded company and learn how to use this wealth of information

o  Use the annual report to perform a fundamental financial analysis

o  Learn the various types of financial analysis and their purpose

o  Learn the key ratios to evaluate a company's liquidity, leverage and operating performance

o  Identify the key benchmarks to help determine whether a company's ratios are in line with competitors

o  Understand horizontal and vertical analysis and how they can be used to identify key trends

o  Bonus: receive our advanced excel hosted financial model complete with all ratios, horizontal and vertical analysis

o  Use our model to perform financial analysis on other company financial statements, including yours

o  Receive benchmark information to use in determining the quality of your analyses

Learn about resources available to perform comparative studies between companies in the same economic sector - even private companies.