Reports
Balance sheet
A snapshot of what the business owns, owes, and the owner's stake — as of a single date.
The balance sheet answers: what does my business look like right now? It's a point-in-time snapshot, not a "for the period" report.
The fundamental equation
The balance sheet always satisfies:
Assets = Liabilities + Equity
If that doesn't hold, the books are broken. Axerity will tell you when it happens (it shouldn't, but if it does, something has gone wrong at the database level).
How to read it
Three sections:
- Assets — what the business owns. Cash, checking, receivables, equipment.
- Liabilities — what the business owes. Credit cards, accounts payable, loans.
- Equity — owner's stake + accumulated earnings.
Equity is the section newcomers find weirdest. It includes:
- Direct owner contributions (you putting money in).
- Current period earnings — the running total of revenue minus expenses since inception. The income statement is essentially a window into this.
So if assets keep growing and liabilities stay flat, equity grows too — because the equation must hold.
Picking a date
The "As of" picker defaults to today. Pick a past date to see what the books looked like at that moment.
This is useful for:
- End-of-year snapshots for tax filing.
- Comparing yourself to a quarter ago — pick the date, look, then pick today and look again.
What it doesn't tell you
- Cash flow. A profitable business can run out of cash. The balance sheet shows balances, not movements.
- Period performance. For "how did I do over the last month," look at the income statement.