Stating that restating is HARD!

Analysing Financial Statements

 When I was reading chapter 4 I felt like I had a firm grasp on Free Cash Flow, and the concept of Operating and Financial Assets, however, when I started to restate my financial statements, I ended up staying up until 3am staring wide eyed at the computer screen thinking I had no idea what was going on and trying to prompt myself to go to bed and finish everything later in the week but not wanting to because I felt I was on the cusp of understanding!

 I have mentioned before that I like to be able to add the numbers together to double check calculations and restating is a perfect way of doing that. I must say that I felt a big sense of relief and pride that I was able to complete the restating with everything adding up at the end for all statement because there was a time when I felt I would give up and drown my sorrows in my kilo tin of milo. I don't think I need to say that I did have quite a few issues:

Issues I had with restating Lee and Man Handbags Financial Statements:

• The main issue was that I thought I had an idea of what some items were, and then when I went to look up on the notes specifically, I was wrong and needed to move an item to a different place. A good example if this is an item called “Translation Reserve” I expected this to be money set aside for translating in the way that I would use this term – changing from one language to another, however the notes indicated that this was regarding exchange rate differences and so I was then required to move the item from Operational to Financial. 

•  I found that the statement of Changes in Equity for 2013 had different amounts for Total Equity from the 31st December 2012 to the 1st January 2013. I didn’t think that one day could make a difference of $1800, and I still don’t! 

• I found the Statement of Changes in Equity the most difficult even though it was the shortest. I felt it was hard to try to get information from both axis of the graph into 1, however when I was able to do that I felt like it was straight forward and I felt as though it was neater – I’m hoping it’s right!