Balance sheet, Net Increase
The changes to Equity given are: Since the total change is 42,500, the difference would be change in Retained Earnings (net income), so net income is
The accounting equation, in short, is: This can be further broken down into: Which can be further broken down into: The GnuCash equation is right, though I would substitute the word equity in that equation with a more-specific paid-in capital. Equity is (simply put) made up of 2 parts: shareholders' equity and retained earnings. Shareholders' equity is the amount invested by shareholders. Retained earnings is the amount earned by the business on behalf of the shareholders. Retained earnings is directly affected by your net income (which is income minus expenses). An increase in income will result in an increase in retained earnings. This must be balanced somewhere. Usually an increase in an asset. It may also be balanced by a decrease in equity. Likewise, increase in expenses will result in a decrease in retained earnings, which must also be balanced. "In the Income Statement that you've linked to, look for the line labeled ""Net Income"". That's followed by a line labeled ""Preferred Dividends"", which is followed by ""Income Available to Common Excl. Extra Items"" and ""Income Available to Common Incl. Extra Items"". Those last two are the ones to look at. The key is that these lines reflect income minus dividends paid to preferred stockholders (of which there are none here), and that's income that's available to ordinary shareholders, i.e., ""earnings for the common stock""." Are you trying to figure out if a project would increase the market value of equity?     I think your issue is that the Market value of Equity will not be updated with the NPV of 40M (Assuming it is truly +, not sure if it's true with 50M of debt).      EV = Market Value of Equity + Debt - Cash and CE   Ev - Debt + Cash and CE = Market equity value.     So I think you would have to update the market value of Equity up with 40M. This would then lead to EV = Equity Value + future income stream discounted + debt - Cash and Cash Equivalents. If you didn't have deposits, then the growth rate is simply ((p1/p0)^(1/t))-1, where p0 is the initial balance, p1 is the current balance, and t is the number of periods. For example, suppose you started the account with $100,000 in 2000. It's now 2015 -- 15 years later -- and the balance is $240,000. So the growth is: If you're making regular deposits, especially if you're making deposits of unequal amounts, the problem becomes much more complex. The easiest thing to do is probably to create a spreadsheet. Make a column for principle, a column for deposit amount, and a column for percent growth that period. Assuming A is principle and B is deposit, then the formula for growth C is =((A2-A1-B1)/A1-1)*100. Copy this formula down the column and Excel should automatically adjust the row numbers. Assuming you put one row for each month you can see the growth (or loss) month by month. You can get a general idea of what your overall growth rate has been by taking the average of the monthly amounts, but this would not be a truly accurate measure of your total growth because presumably (hopefully) you have more money in the later months than the earlier months. But it would be a good measure of how your investments are doing. Part A solution:  Assume no turnover in A.:      Average Balance * Annual Interest - Average Balance * Annual Cost of funds + Annual Fee = Profit from A        Profit From A = Average Balance * Interest Rate - Cost of Funds * Average Balance + Annual Fee     So for B here is the sneaky thing, the Average Balance is 1/12 of the Volume... That makes it really simple...       Volume * InterChange - Average Balance * Cost of Funds + Annual Fee = Profit From A       Volume = 12 x Average Balance So:       12 x Average Balance * Interchange (0.015) - Average Balance * Cost of Funds (0.04) + Annual Fee (Say 50)= Profit From A (260)       0.18* Average Balance - 0.04 * Average Balance = 210  Average Balance = 210/.14  Annual turnover = 12* Average Balance   Come @ me bro :p Expense accounts are closed into equity.  Same with revenue.   So an increase in an expense means lower equity (lower retained earnings since there is more expense). Ergo, decrease equity and increase a liability. Increase a liability since it was accrued, which is usually used specifically to refer to things that kind of just happen in the background. Aka the firm most likely didn't pay cash for that right then and there so increase a payable. This is assuming that you are now making some amount X per month which is more than the income you used to have as a student. (Otherwise, the question seems rather moot.) All figures should be net amounts (after taxes). First, figure out what the difference in your cost of living is. That is, housing, electricity, utilities, the basics that you need to have to have a place in which to live. I'm not considering food costs here unless they were subsidized while you were studying. Basically, you want to figure out how much you now have to spend extra per month for basic sustenance. Then, figure out how much more you are now making, compared to when you were a student. Subtract the sustenance extra from this to get your net pay increase. After that is when it gets trickier. Basically, you want to set aside or invest as much of the pay increase as possible, but you probably have other expenses now that you didn't before and which you cannot really do that much about. This mights be particular types of clothes, commute fares (car keepup, gas, bus pass, ...), or something entirely different. Anyway, decide on a savings goal, as a percentage of your net pay increase compared to when you were a student. This might be 5%, 10% or (if you are really ambitious) 50% or more. Whichever number you pick, make sure it's reasonable giving your living expenses, and keep in mind that anything is better than nothing. Find a financial institution that offers a high-interest savings account, preferably one with free withdrawals, and sign up for one. Each and every time you get paid, figure out how much to save based on the percentage you determined (if your regular case is that you get the same payment each time, you can simply set up an automated bank transfer), put that in the savings account and, for the moment, forget about that money. Try your best to live only on the remainder, but if you realize that you set aside too much, don't be afraid to tap into the savings account. Adjust your future deposits accordingly and try to find a good balance. At the end of each month, deposit whatever remains in your regular account into your savings account, and if that is a sizable amount of money, consider raising your savings goal a little. The ultimate goal should be that you don't need to tap into your savings except for truly exceptional situations, but still keep enough money outside of the savings account to cater to some of your wants. Yes, bank interest rates these days are often pretty dismal, and you will probably be lucky to find a savings account that (especially after taxes) will even keep up with inflation. But to start with, what you should be focusing on is not to make money in terms of real value appreciation, but simply figuring out how much money you really need to sustain a working life for yourself and then walking that walk. Eventually (this may take anywhere from a couple of months to a year or more), you should have settled pretty well on an amount that you feel comfortable with setting aside each month and just letting be. By that time, you should have a decently sized nest egg already, which will help you get over rough spots, and can start thinking about other forms of investing some of what you are setting aside. Whenever you get a net pay raise of any kind (gross pay raise, lower taxes, bonus, whichever), increase your savings goal by a portion of that raise. Maybe give yourself 60% of the raise and bank the remaining 40%. That way, you are (hopefully!) always increasing the amount of money that you are setting aside, while also reaping some benefits right away. One major upside of this approach is that, if you lose your job, not only will you have that nest egg, you will also be used to living on less. So you will have more money in the bank and less monthly expenses, which puts you in a significantly better position than if you had only one of those, let alone neither. You have defined net profit to include all income and, presumably, expenses. Specifically, you are including income from other sources and are including finance costs and tax expense. For the quarter ended June 30, 2015, the net profit, by your definition, is 12.58. This is given on line 9 of the PDF. You ask how you can review this information. You cannot, given only the PDF you linked to. Note that the numbers have not been audited so it is the case that no trusted third party has yet reviewed it and signed off that the information is accurate. Lucky you - here where I live that does not  work, you put money on the table year 1. Anyhow... You HAVE to account for inflation. THat is where the gain comes from. Not investment increase (value of item), but the rent goes higher, while your mortgage does not (you dont own more moeny in 3 years if you keep paying, but likely you take more rent). Over 5 or 10 years the difference may be significant. Also you pay back the mortgage - that is not free cash flow, but it is a growth in your capital base. Still, 1 flat does not make a lot ;) You need 10+, so go on earning more down payments. First, A credit account is increased by credit transactions and decreased by debits. Liabilities is a credit account and should be a positive number.  A debit account is increased by debit transactions and decreased by credit. Assets is a debit account and should be a positive number.  Equity = Assets (debit) - Liabilities (credit) may be positive or negative.  You currently are subtracting a negative number for a net positive, since your Liabilities is set as a debit account.  How you currently are set -> Equity = Assets (debit) - Liabilities (debit) It is easier to understand if you change the columns from Increase/Decrease to Credit/Debit. I believe this is changed through Edit > Preferences > Accounts > Labels > Use formal accounting labels.  To fix your situation, open up the Loan account and switch columns on the amounts. This will decrease Opening Balances and increase the loan, per your current column headings.  This is a snippet of Opening Balances. You see that Opening Balances is debited and the Loan/Liability account credited. I included Petty Cash to show the reverse. Petty Cash is an asset, so it credits Opening Balances and debits Petty cash. This is a student loan Liability account. As you see, the Opening Balance is debited and decreased. The loan is credited and Liabilities increased. As payments are made, the reverse happens. The loan, being a credit account, is debited and the balance decreases. Opening Balances moves closer to 0 as well. The savings account, being a debit account, is credited and the balance decreases. There has been no change in Equity since Liabilities and Assets decresed by the same amount. Specifically I'm trying to understand this pargraph:  &gt;Stripping the German mobile-phone unit of its cash and increasing its net debt before the IPO could help lower the unit’s average cost of capital, said Carlos Winzer, a senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service.  &gt;“Telefonica Deutschland had a very strong cash position and no debt, so this move will allow the German unit to have a more efficient balance sheet structure,” said Winzer, who has covered Telefonica for 20 years  How does moving cash from the German unit to the Spanish Telefonica unit induce a more efficient balance sheet structure for the German unit?  Appreciate any help! "For stock options, where I'm used to seeing these terms: Volume is usually reported per day, whereas open interest is cumulative. In addition, some volume closes positions and some opens positions.  For example, if I am long one contract and sell it to someone who was short one contract, then that adds to volume and reduces open interest.  If I hold no contracts and sell (creating a short position) to someone who also had no contracts, then I add to volume and I increase open interest. EDIT: With the clarification in your comment, then I would say some people opened and closed positions in that one day.  Their opening and closing trades both contribute to ""volume"" but they have not net position in the ""open interest.""" "First, don't use Yahoo's mangling of the XBRL data to do financial analysis.  Get it from the horse's mouth: http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html Search for Facebook, select the latest 10-Q, and look at the income statement on pg. 6 (helpfully linked in the table of contents).  This is what humans do. When you do this, you see that Yahoo omitted FB's (admittedly trivial) interest expense.  I've seen much worse errors. If you're trying to scrape Yahoo... well do what you must.  You'll do better getting the XBRL data straight from EDGAR and mangling it yourself, but there's a learning curve, and if you're trying to compare lots of companies there's a problem of mapping everybody to a common chart of accounts. Second, assuming you're not using FCF as a valuation metric (which has got some problems)... you don't want to exclude interest expense from the calculation of free cash flow.  This becomes significant for heavily indebted firms. You might as well just start from net income and adjust from there... which, as it happens, is exactly the approach taken by the normal ""indirect"" form of the statement of cash flows.  That's what this statement is for.  Essentially you want to take cash flow from operations and subtract capital expenditures (from the cash flow from investments section).  It's not an encouraging sign that Yahoo's lines on the cash flow statement don't sum to the totals. As far as definitions go... working capital is not assets - liabilities, it is current assets - current liabilities.  Furthermore, you want to calculate changes in working capital, i.e. the difference in net current assets from the previous quarter.  What you're doing here is subtracting the company's accumulated equity capital from a single quarter's operating results, which is why you're getting an insane result that in no way resembles what appears in the statement of cash flows.  Also you seem to be using the numbers for the wrong quarter - 2014q4 instead of 2015q3. I can't figure out where you're getting your depreciation number from, but the statement of cash flows shows they booked $486M in depreciation for 2015q3; your number is high. FB doesn't have negative FCF." &gt; But so long as the incremental improvement to your bottom line is there, the investment is sound, with or without taxes.  wat  If E(ROA)&gt;0 it's a sound investment? Not at all.  &gt; any investment the company makes that improves their net income automatically means more money for the company  Where is this money coming from? If it's debt-financed it escapes corporate tax rate because interest payments are deductible. Is it coming from the company's retained earnings? We have less of that now because we hiked up the corporate tax rate.   Your argument also neglects the impact corporate taxes have on equity financing and corporate leverage. This was not the point of confusion. I said that the dy increased and that this means the investment is performing fairly well being that we don't know the stage the company is in or anything about the health of the economy. He said with the given information the investment is performing poorly. This is where we disagreed.