Lita Epstein 
Reading Financial Reports For Dummies 

Discover how to decipher financial reports

Especially relevant in today’s world of corporate scandals andnew accounting laws, the numbers in a financial report containvitally important information about where a company has been andwhere it is going.

Packed with new and updated information, Reading Financial Reports For Dummies, 3rd Edition gives you a quick but clearintroduction to financial reports-and how to decipher theinformation in them.
* New information on the separate accounting and financialreporting standards for private/small businesses versuspublic/large businesses
* New content to match SEC and other governmental regulatorychanges
* New information about how the analyst-corporate connection hasactually changed the playing field
* The impact of corporate communications and newtechnologies
* New examples that reflect current trends
* Updated websites and resources

Reading Financial Reports For Dummies is for investors, traders, brokers, managers, and anyone else who is looking for areliable, up-to-date guide to reading financial reportseffectively.

Table of Content

Introduction 1

Part I: Getting Started with Reading Financial Reports5

Chapter 1: Opening the Cornucopia of Reports 7

Chapter 2: Recognizing Business Types and Their Tax Rules 19

Chapter 3: Public or Private: How Company Structure Affects the Books 27

Chapter 4: Digging into Accounting Basics 41

Part II: Checking Out the Big Show: Annual Reports 57

Chapter 5: Exploring the Anatomy of an Annual Report 59

Chapter 6: Balancing Assets against Liabilities and Equity73

Chapter 7: Using the Income Statement 89

Chapter 8: The Statement of Cash Flows 105

Chapter 9: Scouring the Notes to the Financial Statements119

Chapter 10: Considering Consolidated Financial Statements137

Part III: Analyzing the Numbers 149

Chapter 11: Testing the Profits and Market Value 151

Chapter 12: Looking at Liquidity 169

Chapter 13: Making Sure the Company Has Cash to Carry On 179

Part IV: Understanding How Companies Optimize Operations191

Chapter 14: How Reports Help with Basic Budgeting 193

Chapter 15: Turning Up Clues in Turnover and Assets 203

Chapter 16: Examining Cash Inflow and Outflow 215

Chapter 17: How Companies Keep the Cash Flowing 225

Part V: The Many Ways Companies Answer to Others 233

Chapter 18: Finding Out How Companies Find Errors: The Auditing Process 235

Chapter 19: Digging into Government Regulations 245

Chapter 20: Creating a Global Financial Reporting Standard257

Chapter 21: Checking Out the Analyst-Corporation Connection 267

Chapter 22: How Companies Communicate with Shareholders 279

Chapter 23: Keeping Score When Companies Play Games with Numbers293

Part VI: The Part of Tens 315

Chapter 24: Ten (+1) Financial Scandals That Rocked the World317

Chapter 25: Ten Signs That a Company’s in Trouble 327

Glossary 333

Index 341

About the author

Lita Epstein, MBA, helps people develop business and personal financial and investing skills. She designs and teaches online courses on bookkeeping, accounting, starting a business, and finance and investing for women. She is the author of more than 40 books, including Bookkeeping For Dummies, Stock Charts For Dummies, and Trading For Dummies.