Question

a) Distinguish between any TWO (2) types of financial information contained in the various financial statements in the Malaysian corporation. (10 marks for this question)   

Answer 1

The difference between two types of financial information contained in the various statements in the Malaysian Corporation are:

Statement of Financial Position

Statement of Financial Position, also known as the Balance Sheet, presents the financial position of an entity at a given date. It is comprised of the following three elements:

• Assets: Something a business owns or controls (e.g. cash, inventory, plant and machinery, etc)
• Liabilities: Something a business owes to someone (e.g. creditors, bank loans, etc)
• Equity: What the business owes to its owners. This represents the amount of capital that remains in the business after its assets are used to pay off its outstanding liabilities. Equity therefore represents the difference between the assets and liabilities.

Income Statement

Income Statement, also known as the Profit and Loss Statement, reports the company's financial performance in terms of net profit or loss over a specified period. Income Statement is composed of the following two elements:

• Income: What the business has earned over a period (e.g. sales revenue, dividend income, etc)
• Expense: The cost incurred by the business over a period (e.g. salaries and wages, depreciation, rental charges, etc)

Net profit or loss is arrived by deducting expenses from income.