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Ten Tips on Customer Financial Statement Analysis

  1. Immediately examine customer financial statements you receive to determine if any require your immediate attention based on serious deterioration in your customer’s financial health.  Financial statement should always be examined for validity
  2. Use a spreadsheet into which data can be input and ratios can be automatically generated
  3. Delegate the task of populating this spreadsheet to someone other than the credit decision-maker
  4. Ratios should alway be calculated.  Calculate no more than ten ratios
  5. Always calculate the same ratios
  6. Know what range of values you expect to see in the ratios calculated, and take special note when ratios are outside of the normal range 
  7. Consolidate the financial information including ratios for at least four periods and ideally periods. Doing so makes trend analysis simple
  8. Don’t sweat the small things.  For example, a customer that earned $10 million after two years ago but reported a profit of ‘only’ $5 million this year nevertheless reported a net after tax profit
  9. Be sure to request the auditor’s opinion letter.  The alternative involves wondering about the accuracy of the financial data received from your customer
  10. Purchase and use credit decision support software that calculates ratios and trends once basic data has been input, and also offers recommendations relating to credit limits and payment terms.

© 2010 by Michael C. Dennis.  All Rights Reserved