About the Balance Sheet

Why is it important?

The Balance Sheet compares your business’s current assets to it's liabilities, showing you how much money is available to your shareholders and help your work whether you have enough money to pay your bills.

If you have investors, they may use it to gain insight into the business and it's operations. They may also be looking at it to see if there is enough cash available to pay dividends or to invest more in the business.

If your business is for sale, potential buyers may also look at the Balance Sheet to assess the state of the business.

The balance sheet can also be used to work out your 'liquidity ratio'. This tells you whether you have enough cash, money in the bank, or assets that can quickly be converted to cash to pay your bills. If you don’t, your business could hit difficulties and could even be forced to cease trading.

The balance sheet shows you

• a list of everything your business owns - your total assets

• a list of everything your business owes - your total liabilities

• the amount invested by your shareholders - your equity.

It's called a balance sheet because each side must match the other.

The balance sheet equation

Assets = Liabilities + Equity

Your assets must equal the total of your liabilities and equity. In other words, whatever assets aren’t being used to pay off the liabilities belong to the shareholders.

Work out whether your short term assets can cover your liabilities

This is also know as your liquidity or working capital. This tells you whether you have enough cash, money in the bank, or assets that can quickly be converted to cash to pay your bills. If you don’t, your business could hit difficulties and could even be forced to cease trading.

The formula for working this out is to divide your current assets by your current liabilities.

Greater than 1= you can cover your debts.

Less than 1 = you could face short term problems covering your debts.

For example,

• Your current assets = £120,000

• Your current liabilities = £60,000

• £120,000 / £60,000 = 2

Your current ratio is 2:1 so you can cover you debts.

What's on the report

Assets

Assets are the things your business owns, such as the amount of money in the bank, any high value items you own such as property or company vehicles, money made from sales. Your assets are then split into two further groups.

Current assets

These are things you only have for short time (usually less than a year) and can sell quickly.

Some examples include:

• Cash or money in the bank

• Money owed to you by your customers. This can be known as Trade Debtors, Debtors Control, or Accounts Receivable.

• The value of any items you have in Stock, also known as Inventory.

Inventory (Products and services) represent the business's raw materials, work-in-progress goods and finished goods. Depending on the business, the exact details of the products and services account will differ. Manufacturing businesses, for instance, will have a large stock of raw materials, while retail businesses don't have any raw materials, but their inventory is typically made up of goods purchased from manufacturers and wholesalers.

Non-current assets

These are things that you typically own for longer than a year and you cannot sell easily. They are split into different sections on the balance sheet.

Most non-current assets will decline (depreciate) or increase (appreciate) in value over time, and this value is also recorded on the balance sheet.

Fixed Assets

These are physical things that your own. Some examples include

• Machinery

• Computers

• Buildings

Intangible assets

These are things that have a value but are not physical. Some examples include

• Patents

• Copyright

• Trademarks

Liabilities

Liabilities refer to the money that your business owes to others, such as bank loans, your mortgage, money owed to your suppliers and money owing to the government in tax.

Liabilities are not necessarily a bad thing. They only become a problem when your business consistently spends more than it earns and has no clear and viable strategy to reduce that trend.

Current liabilities

These refer to money that you owe and need to pay back in the short-term, usually less than a year.

Some examples of current liabilities are

• Bank loans and credit cards.

• Money you owe your suppliers. This can be known as Trade Creditors, Credit Control or Accounts Payable.

• Money you owe the government for tax.

Non-current liabilities

These are liabilities which are due to paid more than a year from the date of the balance sheet.

Some examples of long term liabilities

• Mortgage

Equity

This is amount of money invested in the business. This can consist of

• Profit and loss or Retained Earnings. This is the amount of profit (after tax) reinvested in the business at the end of the financial year, and not distributed to shareholders.

• Equity - the amount invested by shareholders or the business owner.