Balance Sheet

The balance sheet lists a firm’s assets and liabilities as of the last day of the reporting period. On traditional balance sheets, assets are listed in a column on the left and liabilities on the right. Accounting rules require that the sum of those two columns match. Since assets usually exceed liabilities, another entry, called shareholders equity, is added to the right column to make the column totals match. The shareholders equity is negative when liabilities exceed assets. Nowadays, balance sheets list everything in a single column, but the same principles apply.

Assets and liabilities are divided into two sections: current and long-term.

Current assets typically include cash, accounts receivable, inventories and prepaid expenses. ...

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