Business Segment Reporting

Business segment reporting is a style of financial reporting that breaks the huge final financial report into, well, segments.

It divides the financial data into pieces, for instance, by department, product, or subsidiary, and reports on the expenses, revenue, assets, and liabilities of each.

For example, let's say there's a bunch of doctors using one building for various surgeries. Maybe each floor breaks into a specialty: the main floor is the Ear Nose Throat area, the second floor is for surgeries on limbs, and the top floor works on the spine. It would be difficult to pinpoint financial issues with such a diverse group if you look at it en masse, but breaking it down by specialty, you could notice that the ENT group seems to not be collecting as much as they did in the past. From there, you can start drilling down on the "why," but at least now everyone knows which group is struggling and can start to make improvements.

The report doesn't have to break down into minute detail though. According to GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), you only need to consider reporting a segment for areas that generate 10% of total revenue, total profits, or total assets.

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Finance: What are a 10K and 10Q?57 Views

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finance a la shmoop what are 10K and 10Q filings well as the pros say 10Q

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very much yeah you know we had to go there sorry well they're just filings a [Girl filing her fingernails]

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different kind of filings legal filings papers or data

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well the 10K is the annual report and the 10Q is the quarterly report their

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note the Q in there yeah very clever naming their people well we have no idea

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why the K is there like shouldn't it have been a 10A fling equals annual

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anyway the filings contain the key elements that report to shareholders the [Man giving presentation to shareholders]

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progress or lack thereof that the company has made in the period it's

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reporting and these apply to public companies people privates don't

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necessarily file... well the K the Q have to contain an updated income statement [Income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement appear]

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balance sheet and cash flow statement along with tons of notes on whatever

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business metrics the company regularly reports the number of people made sick

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by the lemonade the number a coal miner Barbies sold the number of Disney cruise

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passengers infected with Legionnaires disease and so on and if you're the CEO [Person puking off the edge of a cruise ship]

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or CFO of the company and you don't get your filings in on time well you'll be

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doing a different kind of filing so yeah 10K, 10Q they're really important

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don't ignore them...

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