Belle has been managing a small company making signs for the last five years. The company has grown significantly in this time. The company has purchased numerous assets, expanded the number of products, entered new markets, and has consistently expanded their customer base. When Belle started the company, she maintained a ledger with most of her transactions, and this was sufficient for her to get an impression of how the company was doing, or so she thought. She had several friends that also ran their own businesses, and all of them were basically using similar ledgers. More recently, however, Belle has become concerned about her finances. Whether it is due to the growth of the company or changing economic conditions she has begun to feel that she does not have a good understanding of how well her business is doing. She took a class to try and help her with her finances and she has come to the realization that she needs to apply some of the principles that she has learned in graduate school to get a better understanding of BelleCo’s financial state. Her first undertaking has been to compile information from her ledgers. Information Belle realized the need to take stock of everything that her company had at its disposal. She was surprised at how much she had invested in the company given that she basically started out with nothing five years ago. She went through her old bank statements and found that her cash had increased over the years, which she thought was good news. She did the same for her inventories
