The Feature Story below about Clif Bar & Company highlights the importance of having good financial information and knowing how to use it to make effective business decisions. Whatever your pursuits or occupation, the need for financial information is inescapable. You cannot earn a living, spend money, buy on credit, make an investment, or pay taxes without receiving, using, or dispensing financial information. Good decision-making depends on good information.
Many students who take this course do not plan to be accountants. If you are in that group, you might be thinking, “If I’m not going to be an accountant, why do I need to know accounting?” Well, consider this quote from Harold Geneen, the former chairman of IT&T: “To be good at your business, you have to know the numbers—cold.” In business, accounting and fi nancial statements are the means for communicating the numbers. If you don’t know how to read financial statements, you can’t really know your business.
Many businesses agree with this view. They see the value of their employees being able to read financial statements and understand how their actions affect the company’s financial results. For example, consider Clif Bar & Company. The original Clif Bar® energy bar was created in 1990 by Gary Erickson and his mother in her kitchen. Today, the company has almost 300 employees.
Clif Bar is guided by what it calls its Five Aspirations-Sustaining Our Business, Our Brands, Our People, Our Community, and the Planet. Its website documents its efforts and accomplishments in these five areas. Just a few examples include the company’s use of organic products to protect soil, water, and biodiversity; the “smart” solar array (the largest in North America), which provides nearly all the electrical needs for its 115,000-square foot building; and the incentives Clif Bar provides to employees to reduce their personal environmental impact, such as $6,500 toward the purchase of an efficient car or $1,000 per year for eco-friendly improvements toward their homes.
One of the company’s proudest moments was the creation of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) in 2010. This plan gives its employees 20% ownership of the company (Gary and his wife Kit own the other 80%). The ESOP also resulted in Clif Bar enacting an open-book management program, including the commitment to educate all employee-owners about its finances. Armed with this basic financial knowledge, employees are more aware of the financial impact of their actions, which leads to better decisions.
Many other companies have adopted this open-book management approach. Even in companies that do not practice open-book management, employers generally assume that managers in all areas of the company are “financially literate”.
Taking this course will go a long way to making you financially literate. In this textbook, you will learn how to read and prepare financial statements, and how to use basic tools to evaluate financial results. Throughout this textbook, we attempt to increase your familiarity with financial reporting by providing numerous references, questions, and exercises that encourage you to explore the financial statements of well-known companies.
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Last update: Selasa, 11 Mei 2021
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