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Financial Statements

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Accounting departments in a business are a very important part of how the business functions. They take care of all aspects that have to do with money, but one of the most notable things they do for a business is handle the financial statements. Financial statements are essentially the backbone of what accountants do for a business. It consists of four separate financial statements in a specific order starting with an income statement, retained earnings statement, balance sheet, and a statement of cash flows. Businesses use an income statement to report if their operations during a certain period of time have been a success of a failure. The way the business determines if they have succeeded or failed is by looking over revenues and expenses. The accountants can then determine the companies’ net income or net loss by deducting the expenses from the revenues, if the businesses revenue comes out higher than the expenses, then they have succeeded, if the expenses come out higher, then they have failed. A retained earnings statement is used to indicate the amount of previous income in the form of dividends that was distributed to you and other owners of the business, as well as how much income was retained into the business to help the businesses’ future growth. A business uses a balance sheet to get an idea of what it owns (assets) and what is owes (liabilities). A statement of cash flows provides a business with financial information regarding cash receipts and cash payments during a specific period of time. A company would use these financial statements to make future business decisions by looking over them and determine what areas they are doing well in and what areas they are not doing well in. A company could determine that they need to focus on certain areas of the company and reevaluate expenses they could gain a higher net income or gain any kind of income if

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