ReadOS / Business
Business Finance and Financial Statements — Part 2
Reading statements, understanding cash flow, profit, valuation and financial decisions.
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- 01Customers are more than revenue: weighing relationship value in investment decisionsThe biggest customer is not always the most valuable relationship. How to weigh profit, volume, stability, learning, referrals and access when deciding which customer work to invest in.
- 02Debt as a warning light: what borrowing reveals about a businessHow interest costs, long-term debt and the mix of short- and long-term borrowing can reveal whether a business stands on its own or depends on lenders.
- 03Debt or equity? Ten questions for funding a small business, and how to grow with less capitalHow to choose between loans and investors using ten questions on cash flow, margins, security, ownership and capacity, plus customer funding and frugal ways to expand.
- 04Decide the investment before the financing: an affordable repayment is not a business caseFinance, leases and subscriptions change when you pay, not whether an investment is worthwhile. How to decide the investment first, then the financing, and keep fixed commitments in view.
- 05Depreciation, capital spending and the weight of heavy assetsWhy businesses that constantly replace plant and equipment struggle to build wealth, how depreciation and capital spending reveal this, and what it means for manufacturing ventures.
- 06Designing a business for durability: a founder's reading of BuffettBuffett reads financial statements to find durable businesses. Read in reverse, the same signals become a design checklist for anyone building a business from scratch.
- 07Designing incentives that enforce themselves: when supervision is not enoughMore oversight often buys reports, not performance. How to arrange a supplier's or partner's payoff so doing the work well is in their own interest, and where such designs fail.
- 08Discounting without destroying your margin: when to discount, which types work and the maths to check firstDiscount strategy for small businesses: good reasons to discount, fifteen discount types, the extra volume a discount needs to break even, and how to avoid training customers to wait.
- 09Durable competitive advantage: the idea behind Buffett's best investmentsWhy Warren Buffett looks for businesses whose advantage lasts for decades, the three shapes that advantage usually takes, and what it means for anyone building a business.
- 10Earned value: what it shows about a job, and what it cannotEarned value compares work done with work planned and money spent. How to measure it honestly, read the indices in context and not mistake delivery efficiency for a job worth doing.
- 11Estimating project costs from cost drivers, not templatesTwo projects with the same deliverable can have very different costs. How to estimate from the drivers that create cost, separate uncertainty from margin and learn from every finished job.
- 12Feasibility is more than the numbers: six tests before you commitA strong spreadsheet can still fail on technology, operations, suppliers, cash, strategy or rules. How to test all six, compare fair alternatives and settle make-or-break questions first.
- 13Finding the cheapest duration for a job: pricing time before you are lateMany businesses only find a faster, cheaper way to run a job once it is behind. How to find the lowest-cost duration at planning, count only time costs that stop and use early options.
- 14Fixed price or not: separating how work is delivered from how it is pricedFixed price, rates, time and materials, cost-plus and target cost each share uncertainty differently. How to pick the delivery model first, then a pricing method the work can support.
- 15From estimate to commitment: keeping the range and setting rules for money held backEvery serious estimate has a range, but the number that gets approved rarely does. How to keep method and range visible, commit on purpose and separate contingency from reserve.
- 16From student to founder: the 18-month rule, minimum viable products, traction and first fundingA practical path for students and graduates who want to start a business: test yourself through work, validate in 18 months, build an MVP, win first customers and raise funding carefully.
- 17Funding the overlap: the cost of running old and new side by sideWhen a business switches systems, premises or suppliers, there is a period when both run. How to price that overlap, give it an owner and decide when the old way can safely be switched off.
- 18Goodwill in acquisitions: what it is, how it is measured and why it is impairedGoodwill is what a buyer pays for a business beyond its identifiable net assets. How it is calculated, what it represents, how impairment testing works and what write-downs tell you.
- 19Gross margin: the quickest test of pricing powerWhy gross margin is often the first number to check when judging a business, what high and low margins usually signal, and how founders can design for healthy margins.
- 20Housing booms: what drives them and how to read themHousing is most households' largest asset and a major driver of the economy. What pushes house prices up, how to judge whether a housing boom has become stretched, and what it means for businesses.
- 21How measures reshape strategy: when goals turn into dates and the horizon shrinksGoals set in growth and margin often reach the workfloor as cost and deadlines, and short review cycles crowd out long-term value. How to keep measures faithful to what the business wants.
- 22HR metrics for small businesses: measuring hiring, retention, absence, training and people productivityEighteen practical people metrics with formulas and worked figures, covering productivity, hiring, retention, absence, training and engagement, and how to use them without micromanaging.
- 23Institution or people? Where the profits of a service business end upIn some service businesses customers trust the organisation; in others they trust individuals. That difference decides who captures the profit, and it shapes how service businesses should be built.
- 24Keeping business records for the long term: retention, archiving and formats that stay readableBackups protect against loss; archives keep records usable for years. How to set retention periods, archive data from old systems, keep files readable and destroy records safely.
All chapters preserve the original KEVOS Insights content. These topic-based reading collections are organised alphabetically; chapters may be read in any order.
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