Horizontal Analysis Formula Calculator Example with Excel Template

To get started with vertical analysis in LiveFlow, all you need to do is connect your data sources and build your reports. For example, let’s say that ABC Company has total revenue of $100,000 for the year. A base year is the first of a series of years in an economic or financial index. Horizontal analysis is most useful when an entity has been established, has strong record-keeping capabilities, and has traceable bits of historical information that can be dug into for more information as needed. This type of analysis is more specific relevant for analyzing the value we maybe selling or acquiring. With the financial information in hand, it’s time to decide how to analyze the information.

Vertical analysis makes it much easier to compare the financial statements of one company with another, and across industries. This is because one can see the relative proportions of account balances. Vertical analysis uses percentages in its analysis, restating either income statement or balance sheet items as a percentage. For example, if you’re using vertical analysis with a balance sheet to analyze your assets, your base amount would be your total assets, with each individual item given a percentage in the next column. The same would apply when performing a vertical analysis of your liabilities. You can analyze financial statements using multiple methods, including horizontal and vertical analysis.

Advantages of Vertical Analysis

The income statement does not tell us how much debt the company has, but since depreciation increased, it is reasonable to assume that the firm bought new fixed assets and used debt financing to do it. This firm may have purchased new fixed assets at the wrong time since its COGS was rising during the same period. Common size financial statement analysis, which is also called a “vertical” analysis, is a technique that financial managers use to analyze their financial statements. It is not another type of income statement but is a tool used to analyze the income statement.

• Vertical analysis is the proportional analysis of a financial statement, where each line item on a financial statement is listed as a percentage of another item.
• Is often used by investors or creditors to evaluate risk and corporate finance profiles.
• Most changes were positive, with increasing revenues and decreasing expenses.
• This reveals how business compare in managing their assets and liabilities, income, expenses, and cash flow .

The higher the proportion of short-term assets, the stronger your company’s working capital position and its ability to meet its near-term obligations. Vertical analysis is also used when comparing statements from different companies or from different time periods.

Accounting Principles II

There are several reasons why using vertical analysis can be advantageous for your business. As an example, we’ll calculate the Cash total from the balance sheet above. For this example, the analysis will be carried out on the data reported for 2021. However, you can how to calculate vertical analysis do this quickly for multiple years, particularly if you use a balance sheet template. Liquidity is a company’s ability to pay off its debts when they come due or even if they come due early. It is an important part of assessing the financial condition of a company.

It is a relatively more potent tool than horizontal analysis, which shows the corresponding changes in the finances of a particular unit/ account/department over a certain period of time. Vertical analysis is exceptionally useful while charting a regression analysis or a ratio trend analysis. It enables the accountant to see relative changes in company accounts over a given period of time. The following examples demonstrate how to do a vertical analysis using these free balance sheet template and income statement template. The calculations are performed in Google Sheets, but you can easily do the same in Excel. On the liabilities and shareholders equity side, we’ve chosen the base figure to be total assets. We’ve now completed our vertical analysis for our company’s income statement and will move on to the balance sheet.

An Example of Common Size Income Statement Analysis

This tool uses one line item on the statement as a base against which to evaluate all other items in the same statement. It does this by making them proportional rather than absolute measures. This kind of analysis can be performed on many types of financial statements including the balance sheet and the income statement. Common-size income statement analysis states every line item on the income statement as a percentage of sales. If you have more than one year of financial data, you can compare income statements to see your financial progress.

Since these proportions are expressed as percentages, you can easily compare them to other time periods or other companies. The following example of company XYZ’s income statement and revenue and expense calculations helps you understand how common size income statement analysis works. By showing each line item as a percentage of an important total this allows analysts to quickly identify correlations, while simultaneously making it easier to compare various companies across the same sector.