Accounting Ratio
  
Categories: Accounting, Careers, Company Management, Tax, Trusts and Estates
It's all about the metrics. Did we pay too much for our inventory or labor? Are our products priced high enough? The competition has 6% higher growth margins than we do, so what are we doing wrong?
Accounting ratios compare line items from all over the bean counting map. Things like gross margin over sales, operating margin over sales, debt to EBITDA ratios, turnover ratios of inventory, days sales outstanding, and a zillion other trivia contest fractions. Accountants deeply involved in the operating management of a company will have a spreadsheet with a hundred or more of these metrics open and ready to be analyzed when they meet with the CEO, CFO, and other honchos in their firm.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is the Acid Test Ratio/Qui...14 Views
finance a la shmoop - what is the acid test ratio or the quick ratio quick how
liquid are we now the quick ratio is a measure of how well or not so well a [Water coming out of a tap]
company is positioned to be able to quickly pay off the bills that it owes
aka its liabilities... why the quickly in there because the assets used to pay off
the liabilities need to be quickly available assets like cash or bank CD's
or publicly traded stocks or bills the company will collect the next ninety [Assets appear]
days or so from people likely to pay them well the company likely owns other
assets like a tractor smelting company but like is it really gonna sell that [Internet mouse cursor clicks search bar]
smelter to then pay off its bill to U.S steel for steel....Ok well the actual ratio
looks like this cash plus sellable securities plus money people owe the
company divided by liabilities so basically the quick ratio compares your
total liquid assets to how much you owe and it's important to note that you [Forklift drops inventory on factory floor]
don't count your current inventory as part of your assets as it's typically
hard to sell everything you have right at this moment and then not at some huge
discount the higher the quick ratio the healthier the liquidity position of the
company another good way to test your liquidity well stand in front of a [Man showering]
radiator and see how quickly you evaporate [Girl stood by a radiator and begins to melt]
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