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The Company Board™: A Visual Approach to Financial Statements

The Company Board™ is a graphical representation of a company's financial results, offering a clear, intuitive way to visualize the Income Statement and Balance Sheet.

Instead of rows of numbers, financial line items are represented by colored stacks, with a scale indicator at the bottom left.

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Income Statement: The Right Side of the Board

Income Statement is the smaller, right side of the board is an Income Statement; it shows the revenues and expenses for the operating period.

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• money coming into the business is shown by the gold stacks (Sales Revenue, and sometimesOperating Adjustments)
• the direct Cost of Revenue (COGS or COS) is shown by the multi-colored stacks;
• other Expenses including SGA, Interest, and Taxes are shown by silver stacks;
• and the Net Income is given at the bottom, represented by black stacks for Profit (and shadow stacks for a Loss)

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Balance Sheet: The Left Side of the Board

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The larger left side of the board presents the Balance Sheet, offering a snapshot of a company's financial position at a fixed point in time.

• silver represents Cash, Receivables and other (non-inventory) Current Assets. Receivables are automatically calculated to their position on Days Sales Outstanding.
• the value of Inventories is shown by the multi-colored stacks along the blue arc;
• so the silver and multi-colored stacks represent the Current Assets
• and Fixed Assets are shown as copper stacks on the left.

The total amount of these silver, multi-colored, and copper stacks represents the Total Assets, and is equal to the combined total of Liabilities and Equity:

• red stacks in the red area of the Balance Sheet represent Short-Term Debt (Current Liabilities) and Long-Term Debt. The stacks nearer to the Cash area are the short-term liabilities coming due within the year;
• black stacks in the black corner of the Balance Sheet represent different sources of Equity.

We teach business acumen workshops. The very rapid visualization of a company’s finances is useful in the classroom, to connect the game board learning back to the client’s real world. And it is useful after the classroom, to refresh the intellectual learning and the experience of the business simulation.But the Company Board is useful even if you have never participated in an Income/Outcome business simulation. The real power of the Company Board is that it simplifies the presentation of complex ideas. Everyone is used to seeing financial statements as columns of numbers, and if the fear of finance is present, it can be difficult to overcome. The Company Board provides a new, different, way to approach that same information.