Balance Sheet Template

The balance sheet template allows you to monitor your assets and liabilities over a three year period. It is a useful for both new and existing businesses to be able to see trends over a number of years, and this spreadsheet can help highlight areas where improvements either have been, or can be made.

There is space at the top of the spreadsheet for you to customise it for your company by entering your company name, and the date the balance sheet was created.

Assets

The assets section is spread into three sections for current, fixed and other assets. At the bottom of the assets section, each of these three asset categories is added together to show a total.

Current assets

This section has space to enter details of your current assets in five categories: cash, temporary investments, inventories, accounts receivable and prepaid expenses. On top of these categories, there is a category for any other current assets that you may hold.

Fixed assets

The fixed assets section allows space for filling in fixed assets falling into one of five categories: property, land and equipment, leasehold improvements, equity and other long-term investments, intangible assets and accumulated depreciation. The last of these categories, accumulated depreciation, should be a negative value, representing the depreciation of assets over time.

Other assets

Other assets can come in a manner of shapes and sizes, so as well as deferred income tax and charity/goodwill, the most common other assets; there is an additional space where any other assets can be entered.

Liabilities and owner's equity

As with assets, liabilities and equity are split into three sections, with a total for all liabilities and equity provided at the bottom of the section.

Current liabilities

The current liabilities section lists a number of common liabilities: accounts payable, accrued wages and salaries, accrued compensation, short-term loans, income taxes payable, unearned revenue and current portion of long-term debt. If not all of these liability types are relevant to your business's current situation, leave them blank, as you may still find yourself with liabilities in these categories in future years.

Long-term liabilities

The most common type of long-term liability is long-term debt. There are two lines in the long term liabilities section, one for long-term debt, and another where any other long-term liabilities can be totalled.

Owner's equity

Many business owners put their own money in their business, and although you might not be regularly repaying yourself, as you would a loan, it is important that this information is still recorded on your balance sheet so that you can see how your business is doing. The owner's equity section has spaces to put values against the owner's investment, accumulated retained earnings and other, for anything else that might fall under owner's equity.

Financial ratios

The financial ratios section is automatically calculated based on the information entered in the assets and liabilities sections of the spreadsheet. There are five calculations: working capital, current ratio, quick ratio, debt-to-equity ratio and long term debt-to-equity ratio. To make these easier to understand, the method of calculation is stated alongside the ratio, for example working capital is calculated by subtracting current liabilities from current assets, and the current ratio is calculated by dividing the current assets by current liabilities. This section is ideal for making quick year-on-year comparisons.