Imagine that you are working in your first job after you graduated from school at a small family-run company. After a year of hard work, you have been asked to think about new ideas for company products and opportunities to expand the business. You will present your ideas to your director, who would like your thoughts to be backed up with research from company records. You remember from your time in business classes that accounting data is both timely and reliable and can be used to understand a business's resources. You have access to the company's online library of records, which includes both managerial accounting records and financial accounting statements and reports for the last ten years. During your research, you find several in-depth reports from both the managerial accounting files and the financial accounting files.

Have you ever thought about how money flows through a business? Do you know how to evaluate the performance of a business based on available data and reports? Explain what detailed information you would utilize in order to back up your ideas for the new company opportunities to expand the business?