In the first article of this series, we gave an overview of standard financial statements and additional disclosures and notes to the statements that a corporation produces on a periodic basis. In this article, we’ll touch on official reports that must be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by public companies.

In this series of articles, we will discuss the different types of financial statements required of a corporation by US GAAP and the different reports required of public companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission. For this part 1, we will give a brief overview of the major financial statements produced by a corporation - balance sheet, income statement, statement of shareholders’ equity, cash flow statement and related footnotes.

Most businesses have bank accounts. A number of situations can take place in relation to such accounts. For example, a company may have written checks in excess of a bank balance. Or a company may have a zero balance account and any checks that clear the company’s bank account are financed by a revolving line of credit. How should these transactions be recorded on the balance sheet? What about the statement of cash flows? In this article you will find answers to these questions.

Do you normally just look at the net income of a company? Do you analyze the company's cash flows from operations? See how the two are connected in this article discussing the quality of income.

What do investing and financing activities and related cash flows represent? How are they different? Why are non-cash activities presented as part of the cash flow statement? Answers to these questions are available in this article.

Does operating income equal operating cash flows? Is it good when there are negative cash flows? Answers to these and other questions are in this accounting article.

Learn about debt covenants and their classification (positive and negative, capital and performance). Understand actions when debt covenants are violated, including financial reporting implications. Review an example of debt covenants involving interest coverage ratio and fixed charge coverage ratio.

Learn about different budget types and classification in accounting.