Financial Intelligence, Revised Edition: A Manager's Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean

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Assets

More Estimates and Assumptions (Except for Cash)

Assets are what the company owns: cash and securities, machinery and equipment, buildings and land, whatever. Current assets, which usually come first on the balance sheet in the United States, include anything that can be turned into cash in less than a year. Long-term assets include physical assets that have a useful life of more than a year—usually anything that is either depreciated or amortized. They can also include land, goodwill, and long-term investments, none of which are depreciated.

TYPES OF ASSETS

Within those broad categories, of course, are many line items. We’ll list the most common ones—those that appear on nearly every company’s balance sheet.

Cash and Cash Equivalents ...