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[MUSIC]

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Hi, I'm Michael Watson,
the CFO here at Treehouse, and

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I'm super excited to welcome to
the financial statement basics course.

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Understanding how to read financial
statements is an incredibly useful skill

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that can help all of us,
both personally and professionally.

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However, because the conversations
surrounding financial statements

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can be can quite high stakes,
people are often intimidated by them.

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The CEO is asking questions about that, or

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this investment bankers talking about XYZ,
and I have no clue what is happening.

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Well, the funny thing is that often times,

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these people have no clue what
they're talking about either [LAUGH].

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Seriously though, these consequential
conversations with smart,

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powerful people can scare folks.

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And sometimes, they never get around
to learning this important skill.

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Well, enough of that.

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We've put together an approachable, easy
to understand course, that will give you

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all the essentials you need to continue
to develop your financial acumen.

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As I said earlier, understanding how to
read financial statements is very useful.

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Financial statements tell a story about
the financial performance of a business or

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organization.

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It doesn't matter if you're working in
the private sector, for the government, or

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a nonprofit, financial statements are an
important part of governing any entity.

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They help us understand what
is going well and what isn't.

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Do the strategy we adopted two years
ago translates to the results today?

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Clearly, being able to talk
coherently to this subject matter,

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is a very useful skill to
your career development.

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There aren't many senior managers out
there who are unable to read profit and

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law statements for example.

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Having some basic accounting knowledge
will help you digest this course better,

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which shouldn't come as a surprise.

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It is accounting principles
that create the framework for

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financial statements to be prepared,
specifically journal entries and accounts.

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Without accounting, there would be
no financial statements of value.

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That said, a deep understanding of
accounting is not a necessary prerequisite

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for this course, so if you don't know
anything about accounting, don't sweat it.

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You'll still be able to follow and
learn from this course, and

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we'll cover some basic foundation
stuff in the next video.

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Also remember, if you have any questions
while taking the course, go ahead and

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navigate to the community section of
Treehouse, and ask your fellow students.

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Feel free to tag me directly with
a question, I love interacting with

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our amazing Treehouse students, and
it's one of the best parts of my job.

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In the following videos of this stage,

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we'll briefly cover
some accounting basics.

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And in stage two of the course,
get into the actual financial statements,

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starting with the profit and
loss statement.

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If you're not interested in a short
overview of accounting principles and

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recognition concepts,
feel free to skip to stage two.