IN THIS CHAPTER

Reading the balance sheet

Categorizing business transactions

Connecting revenue and expenses with their assets and liabilities

Examining where businesses go for capital

Understanding values in balance sheets

This chapter explores one of the three primary financial statements reported by business and not-for-profit entities: the balance sheet, which is also called the statement of financial condition and the statement of financial position. This financial statement summarizes the assets of a business and its liabilities and owners’ equity sources at a point in time. The balance sheet is a two-sided financial statement.

The balance sheet may seem to stand alone because it’s presented on a separate page in a financial report, but keep in mind that the assets and liabilities reported in a balance sheet are the results of the activities, or transactions, of the business. Transactions are economic exchanges between the business and the parties it deals with: customers, employees, vendors, government agencies, and sources of capital. The other two financial statements — the income statement and the statement of cash flows (see Book 1, Chapter 4) — report transactions, whereas the balance sheet reports values at an instant in time. The balance sheet is prepared at the end of the income statement period.

Unlike the income statement, the balance sheet doesn’t have a natural bottom line, or one key figure that’s the focus of attention. The balance sheet reports various assets, liabilities, and sources of owners’ equity. Cash is the most important asset, but other assets are important as well. Short-term liabilities are compared to cash and assets that can be converted into cash quickly. The balance sheet, as we explain in this chapter, has to be read as a whole — you can’t focus only on one or two items in this financial summary of the business. You shouldn’t put on blinders in reading a balance sheet by looking only at two or three items. You might miss important information by not perusing the whole balance sheet.

Expanding the Accounting Equation

The accounting equation is a condensed version of a balance sheet. In its most concise form, the accounting equation is as follows:

Figure 3-1 expands the accounting equation to identify the basic accounts reported in a balance sheet.

Many of the balance sheet accounts you see in Figure 3-1 are introduced in Book 1, Chapter 2, which explains the income statement and the profit-making activities of a business. In fact, most balance sheet accounts are driven by profit-making transactions.

Certain balance sheet accounts are not involved in recording the profit-making transactions of a business. Short- and long-term debt accounts aren’t used in recording revenue and expenses, and neither is the invested capital account, which records the investment of capital from the owners of the business. Transactions involving debt and owners’ invested capital accounts have to do with financing the business — that is, securing the capital needed to run the business.

Presenting a Proper Balance Sheet

Figure 3-2 presents a two-year comparative balance sheet for the business example introduced in Chapter 2 of this minibook. This business sells products and makes sales on credit to its customers. The balance sheet is at the close of business, December 31, 2016 and 2017. In most cases, financial statements are not completed and released until a few weeks after the balance sheet date. Therefore, by the time you read this financial statement, it’s already somewhat out of date, because the business has continued to engage in transactions since December 31, 2017. When significant changes have occurred in the interim between the closing date of the balance sheet and the date of releasing its financial report, a business should disclose these subsequent developments in the footnotes to the financial statements.

The balance sheet in Figure 3-2 is in the vertical (portrait) layout, with assets on top and liabilities and owners’ equity on the bottom. Alternatively, a balance sheet may be in the horizontal (landscape) mode, with liabilities and owners’ equity on the right side and assets on the left.

The financial statement in Figure 3-2 is called a classified balance sheet because certain accounts are grouped into classes (groups). Although the accounts in the class are different, they have common characteristics. Two such classes are current assets and current liabilities. Notice that subtotals are provided for each class. We discuss the reasons for reporting these classes of accounts later in the chapter (see “Current assets and liabilities”). The total amount of assets and the total amount of liabilities plus owners’ equity are given at the bottom of the columns for each year. We probably don’t have to remind you that these two amounts should be equal; otherwise, the company’s books aren’t in balance.

If a business doesn’t release its annual financial report within a few weeks after the close of its fiscal year, you should be alarmed. The reasons for such a delay are all bad. One reason might be that the business’s accounting system isn’t functioning well and the controller (chief accounting officer) has to do a lot of work at year-end to get the accounts up to date and accurate for preparing its financial statements. Another reason is that the business is facing serious problems and can’t decide on how to account for the problems. Perhaps a business is delaying the reporting of bad news. Or the business may have a serious dispute with its independent CPA auditor that hasn’t been resolved.

The balance sheet in Figure 3-2 includes a column for changes in the assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity over the year (from year end 2016 through year end 2017). Including these changes is not required by financial reporting standards, and in fact most businesses do not include the changes. It’s certainly acceptable to report balance sheet changes, but it’s not mandated, and most companies don’t. We include the changes for ease of reference in this chapter. Transactions generate changes in assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity, which we summarize later in the chapter (see the section “Understanding That Transactions Drive the Balance Sheet”).

Judging Liquidity and Solvency

Solvency refers to the ability of a business to pay its liabilities on time. Delays in paying liabilities on time can cause serious problems for a business. In extreme cases, a business can be thrown into involuntary bankruptcy. Even the threat of bankruptcy can cause serious disruptions in the normal operations of a business, and profit performance is bound to suffer. The liquidity of a business isn’t a well-defined term; it can take on different meanings. However, generally it refers to the ability of a business to keep its cash balance and its cash flows at adequate levels so that operations aren’t disrupted by cash shortfalls.

If current liabilities become too high relative to current assets — which constitute the first line of defense for paying current liabilities — managers should move quickly to resolve the problem. A perceived shortage of current assets relative to current liabilities could ring alarm bells in the minds of the company’s creditors and owners.

Therefore, notice the following points in Figure 3-2 (dollar amounts refer to year-end 2017):

• Current assets: The first four asset accounts (cash, accounts receivable, inventory, and prepaid expenses) are added to give the $8,815,000 subtotal for current assets.
• Current liabilities: The first four liability accounts (accounts payable, accrued expenses payable, income tax payable, and short-term notes payable) are added to give the $4.03 million subtotal for current liabilities.
• Notes payable: The total interest-bearing debt of the business is divided between $2.25 million in short-term notes payable (those due in one year or sooner) and $4 million in long-term notes payable (those due after one year).

Read on for details on current assets and liabilities and on the current and quick ratios.

Current and quick ratios

The sources of cash for paying current liabilities are the company’s current assets. That is, current assets are the first source of money to pay current liabilities when these liabilities come due. Remember that current assets consist of cash and assets that will be converted into cash in the short run.

The current ratio lets you size up current assets against total current liabilities. Using information from the balance sheet (refer to Figure 3-2), you compute the company’s year-end 2017 current ratio as follows:

Generally, businesses do not provide their current ratio on the face of their balance sheets or in the footnotes to their financial statements — they leave it to the reader to calculate this number. On the other hand, many businesses present a financial highlights section in their financial report, which often includes the current ratio.

The quick ratio is more restrictive. Only cash and assets that can be immediately converted into cash are included, which excludes accounts receivable, inventory, and prepaid expenses. The business in this example doesn’t have any short-term marketable investments that could be sold on a moment’s notice, so only cash is included for the ratio. You compute the quick ratio as follows (see Figure 3-2):

Folklore has it that a company’s current ratio should be at least 2.0, and its quick ratio, 1.0. However, business managers know that acceptable ratios depend a great deal on general practices in the industry for short-term borrowing. Some businesses do well with current ratios less than 2.0 and quick ratios less than 1.0, so take these benchmarks with a grain of salt. Lower ratios don’t necessarily mean that the business won’t be able to pay its short-term (current) liabilities on time. Chapter 5 of this minibook explains solvency in more detail.

Understanding That Transactions Drive the Balance Sheet

A balance sheet is a snapshot of the financial condition of a business at an instant in time — the most important moment in time being at the end of the last day of the income statement period. The fiscal, or accounting, year of our business example ends on December 31. So its balance sheet is prepared at the close of business at midnight December 31. (A company should end its fiscal year at the close of its natural business year or at the close of a calendar quarter — September 30, for example.)

This freeze-frame nature of a balance sheet may make it appear that a balance sheet is static. Nothing is further from the truth. A business doesn’t shut down to prepare its balance sheet. The financial condition of a business is in constant motion because the activities of the business go on nonstop.

Transactions change the makeup of a company’s balance sheet — that is, its assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity. The transactions of a business fall into three fundamental types:

• Operating activities, which also can be called profit-making activities: This category refers to making sales and incurring expenses, and it also includes accompanying transactions that lead or follow the recording of sales and expenses. For example, a business records sales revenue when sales are made on credit and then, later, records cash collections from customers. The transaction of collecting cash is the indispensable follow-up to making the sale on credit.

  For another example, a business purchases products that are placed in its inventory (its stock of products awaiting sale), at which time it records an entry for the purchase. The expense (the cost of goods sold) is not recorded until the products are actually sold to customers. Keep in mind that the term operating activities includes the associated transactions that precede or are subsequent to the recording of sales and expense transactions.

• Investing activities: This term refers to making investments in assets and (eventually) disposing of the assets when the business no longer needs them. The primary examples of investing activities for businesses that sell products and services are capital expenditures, which are the amounts spent to modernize, expand, and replace the long-term operating assets of a business. A business may also invest in financial assets, such as bonds and stocks or other types of debt and equity instruments. Purchases and sales of financial assets are also included in this category of transactions.
• Financing activities: These activities include securing money from debt and equity sources of capital, returning capital to these sources, and making distributions from profit to owners. Note that distributing profit to owners is treated as a financing transaction. For example, when a business corporation pays cash dividends to its stockholders, the distribution is treated as a financing transaction. The decision of whether to distribute some of its profit depends on whether the business needs more capital from its owners to grow the business or to strengthen its solvency. Retaining part or all of the profit for the year is one way of increasing the owners’ equity in the business. We discuss this topic later in “Financing a Business: Sources of Cash and Capital.”

Figure 3-3 presents a summary of changes in assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity during the year for the business example introduced in Book 1, Chapter 2 and continued in this chapter. Notice the middle three columns, which show each of the three basic types of transactions of a business. One column is for changes caused by its revenue and expenses and their connected transactions during the year, which collectively are called operating activities (although we prefer to call them profit-making activities). The second column is for changes caused by its investing activities during the year. The third column is for the changes caused by its financing activities.

Note: Figure 3-3 doesn’t include subtotals for current assets and liabilities; the formal balance sheet for this business is in Figure 3-2. Businesses don’t report a summary of changes in their assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity (though we think such a summary would be helpful to users of financial reports). The purpose of Figure 3-3 is to demonstrate how the three major types of transactions during the year change the assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity accounts of the business during the year.

The 2017 income statement of the business is shown in Book 1, Chapter 2’s Figure 2-1. You may want to flip back to this financial statement. On sales revenue of $26 million, the business earned $1.69 million bottom-line profit (net income) for the year. The sales and expense transactions of the business during the year plus the associated transactions connected with sales and expenses cause the changes shown in the operating-activities column in Figure 3-3. You can see that the $1.69 million net income has increased the business’s owners’ equity–retained earnings by the same amount. (The business paid $750,000 distributions from profit to its owners during the year, which decreases the balance in retained earnings.)

The operating-activities column in Figure 3-3 is worth lingering over because it shows the financial outcomes of making profit. In our experience, most people see a profit number, such as the $1.69 million in this example, and stop thinking any further about the financial outcomes of making the profit. This is like going to a movie because you like its title, without knowing anything about the plot and characters. You probably noticed that the $1,515,000 increase in cash in this operating-activities column differs from the $1,690,000 net income figure for the year. The cash effect of making profit (which includes the associated transactions connected with sales and expenses) is almost always different from the net income amount for the year. Book 1, Chapter 4 explains this difference.

The summary of changes in Figure 3-3 gives you a sense of the balance sheet in motion, or how the business got from the start of the year to the end of the year. Having a good sense of how transactions propel the balance sheet is important. This kind of summary of balance sheet changes can be helpful to business managers who plan and control changes in the assets and liabilities of the business. Managers need a solid understanding of how the three basic types of transactions change assets and liabilities. Figure 3-3 also provides a useful platform for the statement of cash flow in Book 1, Chapter 4.

Sizing Up Assets and Liabilities

When you first read the balance sheet in Figure 3-2, did you wonder about the size of the company’s assets, liabilities, and owners’ equities? Did you ask, “Are the balance sheet accounts about the right size?” The balances in a company’s balance sheet accounts should be compared with the sales revenue size of the business. The amounts of assets that are needed to carry on the profit-making transactions of a business depend mainly on the size of its annual revenue. And the sizes of its assets, in turn, largely determine the sizes of its liabilities — which, in turn, determines the size of its owners’ equity accounts (although the ratio of liabilities and owners’ equity depends on other factors as well).

Although the business example we use in this chapter is hypothetical, we didn’t make up the numbers at random. We use a modest-sized business that has $26 million in annual sales revenue. The other numbers in its income statement and balance sheet are realistic relative to each other. We assume that the business earns 45 percent gross margin ($11.7 million gross margin ÷ $26 million sales revenue = 45 percent), which means its cost of goods sold expense is 55 percent of sales revenue. The sizes of particular assets and liabilities compared with their relevant income statement numbers vary from industry to industry and even from business to business in the same industry.

Based on the business’s history and operating policies, the managers of a business can estimate what the size of each asset and liability should be; these estimates provide useful control benchmarks to which the actual balances of the assets and liabilities are compared. Assets (and liabilities, too) can be too high or too low relative to the sales revenue and expenses that drive them, and these deviations can cause problems that managers should try to remedy.

For example, based on the credit terms extended to its customers and the company’s actual policies regarding how aggressively it acts in collecting past-due receivables, a manager determines the range for the proper, or within-the-boundaries, balance of accounts receivable. This figure is the control benchmark. If the actual balance is reasonably close to this control benchmark, accounts receivable is under control. If not, the manager should investigate why accounts receivable is smaller or larger than it should be.

This section discusses the relative sizes of the assets and liabilities in the balance sheet that result from sales and expenses (for the fiscal year 2017). The sales and expenses are the drivers, or causes, of the assets and liabilities. If a business earned profit simply by investing in stocks and bonds, it wouldn’t need all the various assets and liabilities explained in this chapter. Such a business — a mutual fund, for example — would have just one income-producing asset: investments in securities. This chapter focuses on businesses that sell products on credit.

Financing a Business: Sources of Cash and Capital

To run a business, you need financial backing, otherwise known as capital. In overview, a business raises capital needed for its assets by buying things on credit, waiting to pay some expenses, borrowing money, getting owners to invest money in the business, and making profit that is retained in the business. Borrowed money is known as debt; capital invested in the business by its owners and retained profits are the two sources of owners’ equity.

How did the business whose balance sheet is shown in Figure 3-2 finance its assets? Its total assets are $14,850,000 at fiscal year-end 2017. The company’s profit-making activities generated three liabilities — accounts payable, accrued expenses payable, and income tax payable — and in total these three liabilities provided $1,780,000 of the total assets of the business. Debt provided $6,250,000, and the two sources of owners’ equity provided the other $6,820,000. All three sources add up to $14,850,000, which equals total assets, of course. Otherwise, its books would be out of balance, which is a definite no-no.

Accounts payable, accrued expenses payable, and income tax payable are short-term, non-interest-bearing liabilities that are sometimes called spontaneous liabilities because they arise directly from a business’s expense activities — they aren’t the result of borrowing money but rather are the result of buying things on credit or delaying payment of certain expenses.

It’s hard to avoid these three liabilities in running a business; they’re generated naturally in the process of carrying on operations. In contrast, the mix of debt (interest-bearing liabilities) and equity (invested owners’ capital and retained earnings) requires careful thought and high-level decisions by a business. There’s no natural or automatic answer to the debt-versus-equity question. The business in the example has a large amount of debt relative to its owners’ equity, which would make many business owners uncomfortable.

Debt is both good and bad, and in extreme situations, it can get very ugly. The advantages of debt are as follows:

• Most businesses can’t raise all the capital they need from owners’ equity sources, and debt offers another source of capital (though, of course, many lenders are willing to provide only part of the capital that a business needs).
• Interest rates charged by lenders are lower than rates of return expected by owners. Owners expect a higher rate of return because they’re taking a greater risk with their money — the business isn’t required to pay them back the same way that it’s required to pay back a lender. For example, a business may pay 6 percent annual interest on its debt and be expected to earn a 12 percent annual rate of return on its owners’ equity. (See Book 1, Chapter 5 for more on earning profit for owners.)

Here are the disadvantages of debt:

• A business must pay the fixed rate of interest for the period even if it suffers a loss for the period or earns a lower rate of return on its assets.
• A business must be ready to pay back the debt on the specified due date, which can cause some pressure on the business to come up with the money on time. (Of course, a business may be able to roll over or renew its debt, meaning that it replaces its old debt with an equivalent amount of new debt, but the lender has the right to demand that the old debt be paid and not rolled over.)

If a business defaults on its debt contract — it doesn’t pay the interest on time or doesn’t pay back the debt on the due date — it faces some major unpleasantness. In extreme cases, a lender can force it to shut down and liquidate its assets (that is, sell off everything it owns for cash) to pay off the debt and unpaid interest. Just as you can lose your home if you don’t pay your home mortgage, a business can be forced into involuntary bankruptcy if it doesn’t pay its debts. A lender may allow the business to try to work out its financial crisis through bankruptcy procedures, but bankruptcy is a nasty affair that invariably causes many problems and can really cripple a business.

Recognizing the Hodgepodge of Values Reported in a Balance Sheet

In our experience, the values reported for assets in a balance sheet can be a source of confusion for business managers and investors, who tend to put all dollar amounts on the same value basis. In their minds, a dollar is a dollar, whether it’s in accounts receivable; inventory; property, plant, and equipment; accounts payable; or retained earnings. But some dollars are much older than other dollars.

The dollar amounts reported in a balance sheet are the result of the transactions recorded in the assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity accounts. (Hmm, where have you heard this before?) Some transactions from years ago may still have life in the present balances of certain assets. For example, the land owned by the business that is reported in the balance sheet goes back to the transaction for the purchase of the land, which could be 20 or 30 years ago. The balance in the land asset is standing in the same asset column, for example, as the balance in the accounts receivable asset, which likely is only 1 or 2 months old.

Book values are the amounts recorded in the accounting process and reported in financial statements. Don’t assume that the book values reported in a balance sheet equal the current market values. Generally speaking, the amounts reported for cash, accounts receivable, and liabilities are equal to or are very close to their current market or settlement values. For example, accounts receivable will be turned into cash for the amount recorded on the balance sheet, and liabilities will be paid off at the amounts reported in the balance sheet. It’s the book values of fixed assets, as well as any other assets in which the business invested some time ago, that are likely lower than their current replacement values.

Also, keep in mind that a business may have unrecorded assets. These off-balance-sheet assets include such things as a well-known reputation for quality products and excellent service, secret formulas (think Coca-Cola here), patents that are the result of its research and development over the years, and a better trained workforce than its competitors. These are intangible assets that the business did not purchase from outside sources but, rather, accumulated over the years through its own efforts. These assets, though not reported in the balance sheet, should show up in better-than-average profit performance in the business’s income statement.

The current replacement values of a company’s fixed assets may be quite a bit higher than the recorded costs of these assets, in particular for buildings, land, heavy machinery, and equipment. For example, the aircraft fleet of United Airlines, as reported in its balance sheet, is hundreds of millions of dollars less than the current cost it would have to pay to replace the planes. Complicating matters is the fact that many of its older planes aren’t being produced anymore, and United would replace the older planes with newer models.

Businesses are not permitted to write up the book values of their assets to current market or replacement values. (Well, investments in marketable securities held for sale or available for sale have to be written up, or down, but this is an exception to the general rule.) Although recording current market values may have intuitive appeal, a market-to-market valuation model isn’t practical or appropriate for businesses that sell products and services. These businesses do not stand ready to sell their assets (other than inventory); they need their assets for operating the business into the future. At the end of their useful lives, assets are sold for their disposable values (or traded in for new assets).

Don’t think that the market value of a business is simply equal to its owners’ equity reported in its most recent balance sheet. Putting a value on a business depends on several factors in addition to the latest balance sheet of the business.