Hello, my name is Emily Gasner, and I'm with
Working Solutions. I'll be talking about how
to read a cash flow statement. As an entrepreneur,
you'll need to know how to understand financial
statements. And one of the three most importance
financial statements is the cash flow. The
cash flow shows you actually how much money
is coming in and going out of your business
during this set period of time. For example,
from January 1st, 2008 to July 11th, 2008.
What you will see, and there are a variety
of different formats for this cash flow statement,
is all of the cash coming in from things like
sales, your accounts payable, any monies that
you're being received, as well as the money
going out. So the money might be going out
in the form of loan payments, salaries, overhead
expenses like your retail location, and at
the end of each statement you will see what
you're ending cash flow is. So after you account
for the cash that's flown out, and the cash
that's flown in, that will show you how much
money you have at the end of the month. It's
really important to make sure that you always
have a positive cash flow position. If not,
you have no cash to actually pay your bills.
So understanding the very detailed nature
of the cash flow is important, and programs
in software such as Quickbooks can actually
print out those reports for you. The different
formats are not necessarily important. They
all show the cash coming in and out. However
there is one that shows a section for your
investment activities, another that shows
your financing activities, and a third section
that shows your operation activities. And
those are the basic pieces of a cash flow
statement.