HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers

Where do you begin if your boss asks you to prepare a breakeven analysis? Can you tell the difference between an income statement and a balance sheet? Between gross margin and revenue? Do you understand why a business that's profitable can still go belly-up? Has your grasp of your company's numbers helped--or hurt--your career? If questions like these make you sweat, you've come to the right place. This guide will give you the tools and confidence you need to master the finance basics, as all good managers must. You'll learn how to: speak the language of finance, compare your firm's financials with rivals', size up your vulnerability to industry downturns, shift your unit's focus from revenues to profits, use financial data to defend budget requests, avoid running out of cash--and going out of business, keep costs from killing your bottom line, invest smartly through cost/benefit analysis, sell your brilliant idea with ROI, and avoid putting too much faith in the numbers.

This collection includes: "Finance Quiz: Do You Know the Basics?" "The Key Financial Statements," "The Fundamental Laws of Business," "Using Statements to Measure Financial Health," "Grow Your Profits by Streamlining Your Business," "Working Your Assets to Boost Your Growth," "Profit Does Not Equal Cash (And You Need Both)," "Why Cash Matters," "Your Balance Sheet Levers," "What's Your Working Capital Model? A Case Study," "Learn to Speak the Language of ROI," "Practical Tools for Management Decisions: Making the Numbers Work for You," "What the Financial Statements Don't Tell You," and more.

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