Guest Talk on How to Read a Balance Sheet by CA. Frenil Dsouza (Partner, Shetty and Dsouza Chartered Accountants)

A session on “How to read a Balance Sheet” was organised on 3rd August 2023. Resource Person was CA Frenil D’Souza, Partner, Shetty and Dsouza Chartered Accountants.

The session began with a brief introduction of the formats and amendments as per the Companies Act 2013 under financial statements and Balance sheets. All the five financial statements i.e., 1) Statement of profit and loss account, 2) Balance sheet 3) Cash flow statement, 4) Company auditors report order and 5) Notes to account were discussed in brief.

The resource person discussed about the importance of understanding the fine meaning underlying each item and its significance in the preparation of Financial Statements. He also highlighted their implications for investors for taking decisions of investments in the Stock market, Dividend, Production, Sales, GST, Profits resulting in increased share value, long term loan etc. The concepts were discussed with examples of companies such as Tata Motors.

The Resource person also spoke about how companies commit frauds, to show a different picture of profits of the business and the ways of misrepresenting them which are to be taken in to consideration while reading a Balance Sheet. The session created an awareness among students of how fraud that can be detected and also how to read a Balance sheet by understanding its impact on the company. Over all the session was very insightful even from the perspective of an investor for decision making.