Reading Financial Reports For Dummies, 2nd Edition

The ins and outs of financial reports, explained in plain English

Want to make sense of financial reports? This easy-to-follow guide gives you a set of tools to understand these complicated statements, helping you read between the lines to determine a company's true financial health. You'll make informed decisions about investing, spot possible problems, and use these reports to manage your own department or company for success.

• Get down to reporting basics — recognize different business types and how their structure affects the books, and grasp the accounting method underlying it all

• Analyze the annual report — make sense of the balance sheet, income and cash flow statements, and the notes while spotting red flags

• Know your numbers — keep an eye on whether a company is making a profit or suffering a loss

• Understand how companies optimize operations — use reports to measure how efficiently management is using its resources

• Meet the financial watchdogs — from auditors to analysts, see who certifies report accuracy and how recent scandals have changed the rules

• Practice makes perfect — put your skills to the test by dissecting the annual reports of two similar companies throughout the book

• Open the book and find:

• The accounting basics necessary to understand financial reports

• New information on reporting standards for private/small versus public/large businesses

• Updates surrounding the 2007 law on international financial reporting standards

• The impact of corporate communications and new technologies

• New real-world examples that reflect current trends

• Updated Web sites and resources

• Tips for spotting the fluff in financial reports