Vertical Analysis Overview, Advantages, Examples

Typically used for a single accounting period, vertical analysis is extremely useful for spotting trends. Though a useful tool on its own, vertical analysis can be a more useful tool when used in conjunction with horizontal analysis. This information can be used to revised budgeted funding levels in future periods. Horizontal analysis involves taking the financial statements for a number of years, lining them up in columns, and comparing the changes from year to year. Accountants, investors, and business owners regularly review income statements to understand how well a business is doing in relation to its expected performance, and use that understanding to adjust their actions.

• This means that every line item on an income statement is stated as a percentage of gross sales, while every line item on a balance sheet is stated as a percentage of total assets.
• All balance sheet accounts are presented as a percentage of the total assets and all income statement items are presented as a percentage of sales (Ott, Riddiough, & Yi, 2009).
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• Vertical analysis makes it much easier to compare the financial statements of one company with another, and across industries.
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By using horizontal analysis, we can now clearly see that Google’s revenue, gross profit, and EBITDA grew faster than Apple’s in every year except for 2015 , with 2016 looking particularly rough for Apple. Horizontal analysis, also called time series analysis, focuses on trends and changes in numbers over time. Horizontal allows you to detect https://www.bookstime.com/ growth patterns, cyclicality, etc., and to compare these factors among different companies. The following example shows ABC Company’s income statement over a three-year period. By looking that the balance sheet above, you can see that while your current asset total went down in accounts receivable, your fixed asset total went up.

vertical analysis definition

Vertical analysis can be used to compare and identify trends within a company from year to year or between different companies . This is done by stating income statement items as a percent of net sales and balance sheet items as a percent of total assets (or total liabilities and shareholders’ equity).

This means it is atypical to compare line items on the income statement as a percentage of gross income. That being said, there are some times where cross comparing ratios of certain accounts would make sense, liabilities expressed as a percentage of net income for example. To conduct a vertical analysis of balance sheet, the total of assets and the total of liabilities and stockholders’ equity are generally used as base figures. The current liabilities, long term debts and equities are shown as a percentage of the total liabilities and stockholders’ equity. The balance sheet uses this presentation on individual items like cash or a group of items like current assets. Cash is listed as an individual entry in the assets section with the total balance being listed on the left and its percentage of total assets being listed on the right.

The formula for calculating vertical analysis

For example, short-term debt is $50,000 and total liabilities are $200,000. Comparing these numbers to historical figures can help you spot sudden shifts. When you conduct vertical analysis, you analyze each line on a financial statement as a percentage of another line.

Overall financial performance is usually analyzed with horizontal or ratio comparison tools. Without analysis, a business owner may make mistakes understanding the firm’s financial condition. For example, an Assets to Sales ratio is a measure of a firm’s productive use of Assets.

How do you do a vertical analysis of an income statement?

Because of this, horizontal analysis is important to investors and analysts. By conducting a horizontal analysis, you can tell what’s been driving an organization’s financial performance over the years and spot trends and growth patterns, line item by line item. Ultimately, horizontal analysis is used to identify trends over time—comparisons from Q1 to Q2, for example—instead of revealing how individual line items relate to others.

Management sets a base amount or benchmark goal to judge the success of the business. The base amount is usually taken from an aggregated from the same year’s financial statements. Then the common-size percentage formula can be applied to the financial item. The common-size percentage formula is calculated by dividing the analyzed item by the base amount of benchmark and multiplying it by 100. If a company’s net sales were $1,000,000 they will be presented as 100% ($1,000,000 divided by $1,000,000).

She most recently worked at Duke University and is the owner of Peggy James, CPA, PLLC, serving small businesses, nonprofits, solopreneurs, freelancers, and individuals. As you can see, each account is referenced in proportion to the total revenue. In a Horizontal Analysis, we state both the dollar amount of change and the percentage of change, because either one alone might be misleading. For a business owner, information about trends helps identify areas of wide divergence. In general, an analysis of Financial Statements is vital for a person running a business.