III. Answer the following questions:

1. Who compiles the information about the company’s financial performance?

2. Who is this information checked by?

3. What does the company annual consist of?

4. What is the purpose of an annual report?

5. What does the income statement show?

6. What does the balance sheet include?

7. When do firms have a strong balance sheet?

8. What is cash flow statement?

9. When may the company be accused of window dressing or creative accounting?

What is finance?

I. Read and translate the text.

Finance is the function in a business that is responsible for obtaining funds, managing funds within it and controlling them. Most organizations have finance manager or financial departments in charge of financial operations. Financial management performs the following finance functions:

1. Planning 5. Credit management

2. Budgeting 6. Auditing

3. Obtaining funds 7. Managing taxes

4. Controlling funds 8. Advising top management on financial matters

So, the main task of finance manager is to obtain money, then plan it, use and control money effectively.

You must be sure that without a carefully calculated financial plan and budget the firm has little chance for success.

Obtaining funds – is a very important finance function, because the amount of money needed for various time periods and its sources are fundamental questions in sound financial management.

Financial control means that the revenues, costs and expenses are periodically reviewed and compared whit projection.

Credit management gives a firm chance to earn money having an interest on credits and loan given. But you must be sure that the firm doesn’t lose too much money to bad debt losses. So collecting founds is a very important task of a finance manager.

Managing taxes means tax implication of various financial transaction. Remember that computation is under strict scrutiny of tax authorities.

Than comes auditing, that is reviewing and checking on the journals, ledgers and financial statements to be sure that everything was done according to accounting rules, and procedures.

And finally, financial people help management in decision making. All these functions depend greatly on the information provided by the accounting statements.

II. Write out unknown words. Budgeting

I. Read and translate the text.

A budget is a financial plan and a list of all planned expenses and revenues. It is a plan for saving, borrowing and spending.

A budget is an important concept in microeconomics, which uses a budget line to illustrate the trade-offs between two or more goods. In other terms, a budget is an organizational plan stated in monetary terms.

In summary, the purpose of budgeting is to:

1. Provide a forecast of revenues and expenditures, that is, construct a model of how our business might perform financially if certain strategies, events and plans are carried out.

2. Enable the actual financial operation of the business to be measured against the forecast.

Budget helps to aid the planning of actual operations by forcing managers to consider how the conditions might change and what steps should be taken now and by encouraging managers to consider problems before they arise. It also helps co-ordinate the activities of the organization by compelling managers to examine relationships between their own operation and those of other departments. Other essentials of budget include:

• To control resources

• To communicate plans to various responsibility center managers.

• To motivate managers to strive to achieve budget goals.

• To evaluate the performance of managers

Budget types:

• Sales budget – an estimate of future sales, often broken down into both units and dollars. It is used to create company sales goals.

• Production budget – an estimate of the number of units that must be manufactured to meet the sales goals. The production budget also estimates the various costs involved with manufacturing those units, including labor and material. Created by product oriented companies.

• Cash flow/cash budget – a prediction of future cash receipts and expenditures for a particular time period. It usually covers a period in the short term future. The cash flow budget helps the business determine when income will be sufficient to cover expenses and when the company will need to seek outside financing.

• Marketing budget – an estimate of the funds needed for promotion, advertising, and public relations in order to market the product or service.

• Project budget – a prediction of the costs associated with a particular company project. These costs include labor, materials, and other related expenses. The project budget is often broken down into specific tasks, with task budgets assigned to each.

• Revenue budget – consists of revenue receipts of government and the expenditure met from these revenues. Tax revenues are made up of taxes and other duties that the government levies.

• Expenditure budget – includes spending data items.