A financial report is a detailed snapshot of your business’s finances over a specific period. It encompasses important data from your balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. Financial reports are often required by law, but they’re also an essential tool for analyzing your company’s performance and potential growth.
A well-written financial report can be the difference between success and failure. But creating these reports can be an arduous and time-consuming process, especially if you’re managing complex and overlapping data sources. To save time and energy, use a reporting tool that enables you to customize and save templates. FineReport, for example, automatically updates and formats your data in the financial reports you create, saving you a huge amount of time and effort.
Begin by collecting your company’s financial information for the reporting period, including sales invoices, purchase orders, expense receipts, bank statements and payroll records. Next, determine the beginning and ending accounting balances for each of your assets, liabilities and stockholders’ equity accounts. Finally, reconcile these balances with the supporting documents to ensure accuracy.
A statement of retained earnings is a financial report that lists the total net income your company earned over a specified period. This includes the total amount of income that was distributed to shareholders and equity partners (either in the form of dividends or shares), as well as the net income from any stock issuances. If your company is operating in a loss, you should indicate this by placing the negative amount in parentheses or changing the font color to red on a full-color statement of retained earnings.