Introduction to Financial Statements for Beginners

This course offers an overview of three key financial statements: the balance sheet, income statement, and the statement of cash flows. You will learn about the components of each statement, what they record and measure, and how to analyze the information within each statement. These statements relate to each other and are used to determine important information about the business, like its profitability or how efficiently it uses its cash.

Can your business pay its financial obligations using cash on hand or through financing? This course will cover positive and negative cash flows, as well as how to review these flows to verify that your business can pay its obligations. Analyzing a company’s profitability or loss is also key, and understanding how to analyze the income statement will give you a picture of your company’s profitability. The balance sheet is another important statement that can help you get an overview of your business at a specific point in time. This course also covers how to use financial ratios that have been developed from the totals listed in the financial statements. These ratios are helpful assessment tools that can be added onto any other financial assessment techniques to understand your company’s financial position. This course ties together all the financial statement functions to convey an understanding of a company’s growth potential, cash position, profitability, and merit as an investment.