Managing By The Numbers: A Complete Guide To Understanding And Using Your Company's Financials

Everyone interested in building a stronger business needs to understand and use the information captured in financial statements. In Managing by the Numbers, business education and accounting experts Chuck Kremer and Ron Rizzuto team up with open-book management authority John Case to demystify the numbers. They present a practical, common-sense approach to reading financial statements and to managing the three bottom lines of business financial performance: net profit, operating cash flow, and return on assets. The book features numerous exercises and examples (with associated templates available on the Web), a powerful new management tool known as "The Financial Scoreboard," and an extensive glossary. Managing by the Numbers is an essential resource for entrepreneurs, business owners, managers, and anyone eager to improve their mastery of the financial side of running a business.

Amazon.com Review
Chuck Kremer, Ron Rizzuto, and John F. Case believe "50 percent of small-company owners and managers don't get complete, timely information about their business's financial performance" and "90 percent don't really understand or use the information they do get." Kremer, a business-literacy consultant, Rizzuto, a university finance professor, and Case, a business journalist, further contend that such data and their proper application are critical to the successful operation of any small business. That's why they've assembled Managing by the Numbers as a self-help guide to the ins and outs of corporate finance. In the first section, they show how to decipher three major reports that everyone should review monthly (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow). In the second, they discuss how resultant figures tie in to "three bottom lines of business" (net profit, operating cash flow, return on assets) that can be examined collectively. And in the third, they explain ways that stimuli for each can be optimized to achieve overall business goals. The combination allows you to "translate your financial understanding into better financial performance," the authors conclude. While much of the material may seem intimidating, it is presented clearly and could indeed provide an edge in today's hypercompetitive business environment. --Howard Rothman

The centerpiece of MANAGING BY THE NUMBERS is the "Financial Scoreboard" (a.k.a. Mobley Matrix), a clever way to visualize the interrelationships between starting and ending balance sheets, the income statement, and the cash-flow statement. The emphasis is on cash, the lifeblood of any business.

The authors also advocate sensible "three bottom-line management," where the primary monitors and measures of business health are Net Profit, Operating Cash Flow, and Return on Assets. The explanations are easy to follow and convincing. Minimal technical terms are employed, and these are explained in everyday, conversational language. A glossary summarizes key concepts.

Much of the book is written in the form of a novel: a story about a small company that sells computers to small office/home office (SOHO) businesses. This story provides most of the examples, providing a logical thread throughout.

I think this is the easiest and most satisfying way to learn a lot of accounting, comfortably, in a book of just under 200 pages. It's a great one for reading on an airplane.


Lucid, logical, lovely!   July 31, 2000
Wiliam W. Casey (Golden, CO USA)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

I got half-way into this book before it was time to take my vacation in Italy. Would a (relatively) sane person take a finance book to Tuscany? Yes, if this is the book!

It beautifully connects the dots on various key financial concepts, making them ACCESSABLE and USEFUL. Managing By The Numbers goes beyond good writing, which it has aplenty, to good thinking: it introduces a way to think about money that is as compelling as it is elegant.

Thank you, dear authors, for dispelling the fog and, at least for this business owner, handing over some dandy tools.


Tom Ehrenfeld's recommendation.   September 17, 2003
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

EXCERPTED From Chapter 3 (The Numbers That Count: Acknowledge the Rules), Page 72*

At the end of this chapter, I refer to several terrific books that delve into much greater detail of these aspects, and I highly recommend that you read them. At the bare minimum, you need to understand the basics.

Folks who speak the language of finance use three financial statements; the income statement, the balance sheet, and cash flow.

Each set of numbers tracks a different function. Each one is important for your business. (Note: I highly recommend the terrific book Managing by the Numbers by Chuck Kremer et. al.-see "Resources" at the end of the chapter.)

The balance sheet provides what experts call a "snapshot" of your business's financial condition at one particular point in time. Think of this statement as what your business owns and what it owes. This statement lists your assets (what the business owns or is due), your liabilities (what the business owes), and difference between assets and liabilities, which is called owner's equity. This sheet is constructed so that your assets minus your liabilities necessarily equal the owner's equity; thus, when it is produced correctly, the sums are balanced.

The income statement tracks your company's profitability over a given period of time. It says whether, in a specific period, you made money or didn't. But, and this is a huge but, it's an abstraction. It shows the promises that people have made to pay you money, and the agreements you have made to pay others. "It shows whether you're making money on the goods and services you provide, once you have taken all your costs and expenses into account. But it isn't real," write Kremer et al. It doesn't show how much cash you've put in you bank account or how much cash you spent." Income statements are subject to manipulation. Because income statements are subject to intangible factors such as depreciation (which tracks how an asset loses value over time), you can show a profit-or loss-that is not directly tied to your activities in that span of time. Moreover, income statements count promises that others have made to you as actual income, while the daily reality may be quite different. So these statements indicate profitability-which is good-but they don't necessarily reflect your daily, actual situation.

For that you have cash flow. Cash flow is, very simply, the difference between your cash receipts and your cash expenditures. It's what you have left after you spend the money that you take in. Consider this measure to be your business checkbook; what cash is actually coming into your business and what is actually being spent? There is no fudging cash. It's what you have on hand-the balance in your account.

EXCERPTED FROM Chapter 3 (The Numbers That Count: Resources), Page 93*

Managing the Numbers by Chuck Kremer and Ron Rizzuto with John Case (Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000)
This gem limns the theory and practice of financial management for small companies. Set aside the fact that some of the basics may apply to larger or slightly more mature companies than yours. Read this to understand how to use the financial life of your company as the basis for critical operational decisions. Kremer et al. show how you need to understand three financial statements (the balance sheet, the income statement, and cash flow) to truly evaluate your company's performance. Moreover, you really start to control this function when you learn how the three statements fit together.

*Tom Ehrenfeld, the startup garden (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002).


Understandiing the numbers   August 20, 2000
8 out of 10 found this review helpful

I find the book Managing by the numbers to be a good desk reference when working with company income statements. I also find that as I go along and learn I need the book less as its very helpful in making a complicated subject easy to understand. I feel its blessing that I found the book and would be lost without it. Numbers have become fun.

William J. Webb