First things first – How will you come to know if a company is making profit or not? Or before that – Why should we know if your business is making profit or not? Well friends one of the prime objectives of starting any business is to make profit. If you are not sure or if you don’t know whether you are making profit or not, I think you have defeated the purpose of starting that business. If your intention is not to make profit are you running a charity?

Profit

Anyway coming back to the topic, How will we come to know if the company is making profit or not? If company says we have got high-profile clients, does it necessarily mean that the company is making profit? If a company says we have got an outstanding brand, does it necessarily mean that the company is making profit? What if you find out that the company has got motivated employees? The walk in together, they walk out together. They take lunch breaks together. They eat together. They even kill themselves together. Well what I mean is they go out for smoke breaks together. Does it necessarily mean that the company is making profit? What if the company directors are millionaires? Does it tell, whether company is making profit or not? How about the company that operates in prime location? Does it necessarily mean that the company is making profit?

Friends, none of these can be used as a yard stick to know if a company is making profit or not. Only way or the most effective way to know that a company is making profit or not is by simply preparing basic financial statements and reading and understanding it.

Basic Financial Statements

There are three basic financial statements that will tell us whether a company is making profit or not. They are:

Balance Sheet
Profit & Loss Statement
Cash-Flow Statement

These three statements will tell us whether a company is making money or not.
It will also tell us where and how a business is making money.
It is a legal requirement to prepare Profit & Loss Statement and Balance Sheet at least once every year.