Financial Statements & Information (2024)

FAQs

Financial Statements & Information? ›

The three main types of financial statements are the balance sheet, the income statement, and the cash flow statement. These three statements together show the assets and liabilities of a business, its revenues, and costs, as well as its cash flows from operating, investing, and financing activities.

Financial statements are a set of documents that show your company's financial status at a specific point in time. They include key data on what your company owns and owes and how much money it has made and spent.

A financial statement, such as a balance sheet or cash flow statement, includes information pertaining to a particular subject, whereas a financial report includes information on many related topics. Put simply, a financial report includes several financial statements.

In the words of the SEC, it shows “what a company owns and what it owes at a fixed point in time.”¹ The second most important financial statement, it gives information about the organization's liquidity and capitalization: its assets, liabilities, and equity as of the reporting date, which is usually the end of the ...

Every element of the financial statements shall contain the name of the reporting entity, the information whether the financial statements are of an individual or of a group, the date of the reporting entity and period covered, the presentation currency and the level of rounding (thousands, millions…).

The major elements of the financial statements (i.e., assets, liabilities, fund balance/net assets, revenues, expenditures, and expenses) are discussed below, including the proper accounting treatments and disclosure requirements.

Financial statements are written records that illustrates the business activities and the financial performance of a company. In most cases they are audited to ensure accuracy for tax, financing, or investing purposes.

Definition: Financial information

Simply put, financial information is anything related to the financial activities and performance of a business. Most often, this information is collected through financial statements or reports that cover a specific aspect of a business's finances, such as cash flow and profitability.

Directors have primary responsibility for the provision of useful and meaningful information for investors and other users of the financial statements.

As such, Financial Disclosure Statements must disclose outside compensation, holdings, and business transactions, generally for the calendar year preceding the filing date. In all instances, filers may disclose additional information or explanation at their discretion.

What is the most important financial statement? ›

The income statement will be the most important if you want to evaluate a business's performance or ascertain your tax liability. The income statement (Profit and loss account) measures and reports how much profit a business has generated over time.

Financial statements show how a business operates. It provides insight into how much and how a business generates revenues, what the cost of doing business is, how efficiently it manages its cash, and what its assets and liabilities are.

Balance sheets show what a company owns and what it owes at a fixed point in time. Income statements show how much money a company made and spent over a period of time. Cash flow statements show the exchange of money between a company and the outside world also over a period of time.

Financial statements are essentially a collection of summary-level reports and a detailed record of the financial information of an organization, including the business activities, assets, liabilities, contributed capital, equities, incomes, expenses, cash flow, and the financial performance of a company.

The income statement shows a company's expense, income, gains, and losses, which can be put into a mathematical equation to arrive at the net profit or loss for that time period.

Financial statements only provide a snapshot of a company's financial situation at a specific point in time. They also don't consider non-financial information, such as the health of the broader economy, and other factors, such as income inequality or environmental sustainability.

Financial statements can be divided into four categories: balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements, and equity statements.