Why Is a Finance Article Review Assignment Important?
After completing your business studies and obtaining a job as an accountant in a given firm, you will need to do financial article reviews for the following reasons:
- Gives investors vote of confidence – Many companies usually have more than one capital provider, creditor, and investor. Hence, for investors to continually inject their money into your company’s ventures, they need to see the financial review in order to determine whether it is safe and profitable to continually inject their money into the business. In the financial review, investors normally focus on specific areas such as assets investments, debt and equity components; not to mention the company’s capital mix.
- Observe the operating results – As stated in the previous point, a financial review gets to show the balance sheet, including the snapshots of the company’s equity, assets and liabilities at the end of every financial year. That being said, each finance formula sheet enables the company to determine the operating results such as the total sales they have made, profits, expenses, as well as any losses experienced!
- Cash flows observation – In a financial review, both cash outflows and inflows will be observed within a given period of time-frame. That being said, these cash flows are normally gained from the company investing and financing in non-operating activities. It is this type of investment that actually results in the payback of investors’ injection of money into the firm.
What to Look out for When Writing Your Finance Article Review Assignment
Here are some of the things you need to really pay attention to when writing doing a finance article analysis:
- Cash – Reviewing the cash structure of a financial institution is quite ‘taxing’. There are a number of things you need to look into. For starters, have the cash accounts been adequately reconciled? Secondly, have the checks that were written but not mailed in time been termed as liabilities? These plus many more questions need to be answered in your article.
- Fixed Assets – You need to examine how the gains and losses of the fixed assets have been adequately recorded? What criteria are being used by the company to capitalize expenditures? And lastly, what depreciation methods have been utilized?
- Receivables – While doing your review, you need to have a look at receivables as well. Are there any receivables that have been discounted, factored, or pledged?
- Inventory – First of all, you need to have a look at some important features that make up the core factor of your inventory analysis. For example, has the physical inventory account been adequately performed? Secondly, were there any consigned goods considered during the inventory count? And last but not least, what elements are included in the cost of inventory?
- Investments – How does the company determine fair values for given investments? How does the company record the gains and losses following the disposal of an investment? Lastly, how does the company calculate investment income?
Some other things that you need to have a look at include: intangible assets, notes payable and accrued expenses, long-term liabilities, contingencies and commitments, equity, as well as revenues and expenses.
Procedure to Write a Great Finance Article Review Assignment
Now that you have known what to look out for when doing a review of finance article, here’s a great procedure on how to get started:
- The first step is to carry out a ratio analysis. Here, you can have a look at the past, future predicted and present company results of the ratio analysis.
- After doing this, you can then have a look at the findings of the ratio analysis that appear to be most inconsistent with that of the company.
- Proceed to then look into the procedures of recording and further accounting transactions that the company carried out. If they have been provided for you in your assignment, then well and good.
- Then turn to investigating any unusual and highly complicated situations that could have impacted and affected the financial results of the company during that given financial year
- After this, focus your mind to tackle and look at any monumental transactions that took place during the end of the given accounting period.
- You can then have a look at any questions that might have arisen from other people conducting previous financial reviews and see if you can come up with solutions for the given questions.
- You can then inquire about any events that took place after the date of having the financial statements in order to have a more polished financial review.
- You can also have a look at other journal entries that the company made!
- You can then check out what the regulatory agencies expect companies to adhere to (if they have been provided in your assignment or through your own personal research)
- You can then go over the financial statements of the company and see whether they harmonize with the financial reporting body or organization.
- Lastly, check out the financial reports of the company’s accountants in order to finalize efficiently on your article review assignment.
Hence, you can now have the confidence to surge forward with your financial review assignment after receiving this information. You can also go over our financial statement analysis articles for more knowledge on how to effectively write your financial review. We also provide essential finance article editing services to make it much easier for you to complete your review!