Customer Reviews

Managing By The Numbers: A Complete Guide To Understanding And Using Your Company's Financials

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after having read the accounting game, lessons from the lemonade stand, I ordered the this book from amazon which goes more into detail the analysis of the three financials - the balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows. here, the authors show the importance of these and how they relate to one another. ever watch people who really know what they are doing when they examine a set of financial statements? don't you envy them? well, not anymore. as this book explain in quite easy to understand terms and that in any business there is not just one but three bottom lines which are net profit, operating cash flow(ocf) and return on assets(roa). the simple truth is that you need all these three to see the big picture. The book also applies different techniques such as the dupont equation, trend analysis and the financial scorecard in understanding a companies financials . if you ever get intimidated by financial statements, you probably don't have this book.

The authors do a great job of de-mystifying accounting. Finance is the language of business, and everyone, especially entrepreneurs, should know the basics. How else will you know the score? The need for this knowledge applies whether you are watching your business or the company that you work for.

The centerpiece of MANAGING BY THE NUMBERS is the "Financial Scoreboard" (a.k.a. Mobley Matrix), a clever way to visualize the interrelationships between starting and ending balance sheets, the income statement, and the cash-flow statement. The emphasis is on cash, the lifeblood of any business.

The authors also advocate sensible "three bottom-line management," where the primary monitors and measures of business health are Net Profit, Operating Cash Flow, and Return on Assets. The explanations are easy to follow and convincing. Minimal technical terms are employed, and these are explained in everyday, conversational language. A glossary summarizes key concepts.

Much of the book is written in the form of a novel: a story about a small company that sells computers to small office/home office (SOHO) businesses. This story provides most of the examples, providing a logical thread throughout.

I think this is the easiest and most satisfying way to learn a lot of accounting, comfortably, in a book of just under 200 pages. It's a great one for reading on an airplane.

I got half-way into this book before it was time to take my vacation in Italy. Would a (relatively) sane person take a finance book to Tuscany? Yes, if this is the book!

It beautifully connects the dots on various key financial concepts, making them ACCESSABLE and USEFUL. Managing By The Numbers goes beyond good writing, which it has aplenty, to good thinking: it introduces a way to think about money that is as compelling as it is elegant.

Thank you, dear authors, for dispelling the fog and, at least for this business owner, handing over some dandy tools.

EXCERPTED From Chapter 3 (The Numbers That Count: Acknowledge the Rules), Page 72*

At the end of this chapter, I refer to several terrific books that delve into much greater detail of these aspects, and I highly recommend that you read them. At the bare minimum, you need to understand the basics.

Folks who speak the language of finance use three financial statements; the income statement, the balance sheet, and cash flow.

Each set of numbers tracks a different function. Each one is important for your business. (Note: I highly recommend the terrific book Managing by the Numbers by Chuck Kremer et. al.-see "Resources" at the end of the chapter.)

The balance sheet provides what experts call a "snapshot" of your business's financial condition at one particular point in time. Think of this statement as what your business owns and what it owes. This statement lists your assets (what the business owns or is due), your liabilities (what the business owes), and difference between assets and liabilities, which is called owner's equity. This sheet is constructed so that your assets minus your liabilities necessarily equal the owner's equity; thus, when it is produced correctly, the sums are balanced.

The income statement tracks your company's profitability over a given period of time. It says whether, in a specific period, you made money or didn't. But, and this is a huge but, it's an abstraction. It shows the promises that people have made to pay you money, and the agreements you have made to pay others. "It shows whether you're making money on the goods and services you provide, once you have taken all your costs and expenses into account. But it isn't real," write Kremer et al. It doesn't show how much cash you've put in you bank account or how much cash you spent." Income statements are subject to manipulation. Because income statements are subject to intangible factors such as depreciation (which tracks how an asset loses value over time), you can show a profit-or loss-that is not directly tied to your activities in that span of time. Moreover, income statements count promises that others have made to you as actual income, while the daily reality may be quite different. So these statements indicate profitability-which is good-but they don't necessarily reflect your daily, actual situation.

For that you have cash flow. Cash flow is, very simply, the difference between your cash receipts and your cash expenditures. It's what you have left after you spend the money that you take in. Consider this measure to be your business checkbook; what cash is actually coming into your business and what is actually being spent? There is no fudging cash. It's what you have on hand-the balance in your account.

EXCERPTED FROM Chapter 3 (The Numbers That Count: Resources), Page 93*

Managing the Numbers by Chuck Kremer and Ron Rizzuto with John Case (Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000)
This gem limns the theory and practice of financial management for small companies. Set aside the fact that some of the basics may apply to larger or slightly more mature companies than yours. Read this to understand how to use the financial life of your company as the basis for critical operational decisions. Kremer et al. show how you need to understand three financial statements (the balance sheet, the income statement, and cash flow) to truly evaluate your company's performance. Moreover, you really start to control this function when you learn how the three statements fit together.

*Tom Ehrenfeld, the startup garden (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002).

I find the book Managing by the numbers to be a good desk reference when working with company income statements. I also find that as I go along and learn I need the book less as its very helpful in making a complicated subject easy to understand. I feel its blessing that I found the book and would be lost without it. Numbers have become fun.

William J. Webb

This was the first book that I've read that makes this type of material easy and interesting. Definitely, check this book out. I always recommend it to friends.

The book is well written with a non accounting audience in mind. A greater understanding of how accounting savvy people utilize the information within balance sheets, P&L's and cash flow statements can be achieved. An enjoyable and worthwhile read for those who want to try and get to grips with the irksome task of understanding their accountant, or even better to use the accounting information available to IMPROVE their business.

This book really is a guide on how to understand your business from a financial standpoint. The authors use a fictional company called SOHO Equipment to liven up the numbers and put a true spin on operating a business. With small businesses as the main focus, business managers at any level will find this book useful and a true reference.

Some key elements are the Three Financial bottom lines (most of us know of only one) that are Net Profit, Operating Cash Flow, and Return on Assets. Understanding these bottom lines and using the three financial statements of the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Statement of Cash Flows in conjuction with each other. This understanding will allow businesses to strenghten their statements and their business to make themselves more attractive to lenders and buyers.

Finally, I found the appendixes (five of them) to be extremely useful as they contain a list of financial terms, A guide to Ratios, and a History of the Mobley Matrix. The author uses these items very well and makes me want to do more research on Jack Stack (Author of The Game of Business) and Louis B Mobley of IBM.

This is an amazing little book. It teaches you the most important financial aspects that you need to know to run your business. I've always dream of starting my own business, and one of the things that was holding me back, was not knowing enough about business finance. I tell you, now I'm very confident and excited. If you own a business or starting one, Please, Please, Please do yourself a favor and read this book.

Finally, a book that let's the rest of us in on the big secrets of financial reports and company financial numbers. This book tells you what numbers to look at, what each number means to your business, and how all of the numbers work together to build a financial picture. I thought that I knew what I was seeing when I ready my companies balance sheet, but I was wrong. As the owner of a small business, I wish that I would have had this book a month before I started my company.

The reading is light and quick with good examples to back up what the authors are teaching you. They start with a light base instruction on Balance Sheets, Profit and Loss, and Cash Reports. After explaining each report and showing an example from their fictional company, they build on that base to show you how to use those numbers to find problems and to answer questions about a company. By teaching you how the numbers relate between these reports and showing you exactly what effect each number has on your company, you will be able to see the big picture of what is going on.

This book was definitely written for the non-accountant person that needs things explained outside of the accounting language. This is a must have for anyone that owns their own business and is not a CPA.