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accounting

A Guide To Financial Statements + Template

Published on December 4, 20244 min read

Handling your small-business' finances requires more than just knowing what’s in your bank account. Business owners use different types of financial stateme nts, such as income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements, to gain a better perspective of their company’s current financial state.

The three main financial statements each focus on a particular aspect of your finances and provide a snapshot of your business' financial performance. While an entire set of financial statements tells the complete story of an organisation, each report can stand on its own for different purposes and is often used for external reporting.

Our financial statement templates and examples will allow you to get a better handle on your accounting and can be a useful tool when courting investors or applying for a small business loan.

In this article you will learn about:

Understanding Financial Statements
Income Statement
Income Statement Template
Balance Sheet
Balance Sheet Template
Cash Flow Statement
Cash Flow Statement Template
Financial Reporting Made Easy with QuickBooks

Income Statement

As a business owner, you'll need to have a handle on the money coming in and out of your business. An income statement shows your company’s revenue and expenses, and when you create this report, you can group and classify the expenses according to the type of cost.

For example, product expenses related to the cost of producing goods, selling expenses related to the costs of customer outreach and product delivery, and administrative costs correlate to general company expenses.

After you deduct the expenses from revenues, you report the net income at the bottom of the business financial statement template you’re using.

This income figure comes in handy as an overall summary regarding the profitability of your business, as you’ll need it to calculate your retained earnings after accounting for any dividends that you pay out.

You can also use it to track expenses, especially when you compare the information to previous years. Business owners will often align the income statement with their budget to analyse spending when compared to the budget for a specific period of time.

Income Statement Template

Download your free income statement template today

To use this template, simply fill out your cost of sales and its subsections, along with your operating costs. You can change the business name and dates, sub-sections, and amounts in the template, and you can also add rows in order to add new revenue streams and expenses. The total amounts will automatically populate based on the embedded formulas.

Balance Sheet

A balance sheet reports your company’s assets as they compare to your liabilities and shareholders’ equity. It shows what you own, what you owe, and the amount invested by shareholders.

Generally, businesses will either own assets or finance them through debt, meaning the total dollar amount of your assets equals the total dollar amount of liabilities and owner’s equity. In other words, your assets = liabilities + shareholders’ equity, and both sides of the equation have to be the same to balance it out.

For example, if a shareholder invests $5,000 into your company, your shareholders’ equity and your assets increase by that amount, and since both sides increase by $5,000, they stay balanced.

The asset and liability sections break out accounts based on the longevity of the balances, meaning you report the long-term debt on a different line than the current debt. The balance sheet is most useful in short periods of time as it’s the only financial statement based on a particular period of time.

While other financial statements like the income statement aggregate sales throughout a specific period, the balance sheet only reflects the current balance, or how much cash you have in the bank at the date of the report. This makes the balance sheet useful for liquidity and solvency analysis.

Balance Sheet Template

Download your free balance sheet template today

The balance sheet template will help guide you through the process. You can change the account titles and the amounts listed in the spreadsheet to fit your needs, as well as adding rows for new accounts and balances. The total amounts will automatically populate based on the embedded formulas.

Cash Flow Statement

The cash flow statement reports the cash inflows and outflows of an organisation based on multiple categories. You can use two different methods to report on cash flow, but both revolve around the concept of cash entering and exiting a business for different reasons.

By using a cash flow statement, you distinguish between cash received from a loan, funds owed in accounts receivable and accounts payable, and cash received from a customer for a sale. This information is vital to the success of your business, as the report helps you develop resource forecasts in order to plan for major upcoming expenditures.

Cash Flow Statement Template

Download your free cash flow template today

To fill out the cash flow spreadsheet, enter the applicable values in their respective cells. The total amounts automatically populate based on the embedded formulas. An example of a cash flow statement is also included to help guide you through the process.

Financial Statements Template

With QuickBooks' financial statement templates, the formulas are already built in, taking you one step closer to understanding the financial health of your company. All you have to do is fill in your business and financial information and watch the numbers add up!

Having a handle on your company’s annual report for financial statements ensure you stay informed and provides a guide for business decisions. You’ll be better positioned to complete these statements when you keep accurate records of your finances in QuickBooks Online financial reporting software. Join over 5.6 million QuickBooks users and help your business thrive!

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