Skip to Main Content
HBS Online
  • Courses
    Open Courses Mega Menu
    • Business Essentials
      • Credential of Readiness (CORe)
      • Business Analytics
      • Economics for Managers
      • Financial Accounting
    • Leadership & Management
      • Leadership Principles
      • Management Essentials
      • Negotiation Mastery
      • Organizational Leadership
      • Strategy Execution
      • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
    • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
      • Entrepreneurship Essentials
      • Disruptive Strategy
      • Negotiation Mastery
      • Design Thinking and Innovation
    • Strategy
      • Strategy Execution
      • Business Strategy
      • Economics for Managers
      • Disruptive Strategy
      • Global Business
      • Sustainable Business Strategy
    • Finance & Accounting
      • Financial Accounting
      • Leading with Finance
      • Alternative Investments
      • Sustainable Investing
    • Business in Society
      • Sustainable Business Strategy
      • Global Business
      • Sustainable Investing
      • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
    • All Courses
  • For Organizations
    Open For Organizations Mega Menu
    • Corporate Learning
      Help your employees master essential business concepts, improve effectiveness, and expand leadership capabilities.
    • Academic Solutions
      Integrate HBS Online courses into your curriculum to support programs and create unique educational opportunities.
    • Need Help?
      • Frequently Asked Questions
      • Contact Us
    • Black, Latinx, and underrepresented minority professionals
      Pathways to Business

      Stories designed to inspire future business leaders.

  • Insights
    Open Insights Mega Menu
    • Business Insights Blog
      • Career Development
      • Communication
      • Decision-Making
      • Earning Your MBA
      • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
      • Finance
      • Leadership
      • Management
      • Negotiation
      • Strategy
    • All Topics
    • Sample Business Lessons and E-Books

      Gain new insights and knowledge from leading faculty and industry experts.

    • Free Guide

      Learn how to formulate a successful business strategy.

  • More Info
    Open More Info Mega Menu
    • Learning Experience
      Master real-world business skills with our immersive platform and engaged community.
    • Certificates, Credentials, & Credits
      Learn how completing courses can boost your resume and move your career forward.
    • Learning Tracks
      Take your career to the next level with this specialization.
    • Financing & Policies
      • Employer Reimbursement
      • Payment & Financial Aid
      • Policies
    • Connect
      • Student Stories
      • Community
    • Need Help?
      • Frequently Asked Questions
      • Request Information
    • Apply Now
Login
My Courses
Access your courses and engage with your peers
My Account
Manage your account, applications, and payments.
HBS Home
  • About HBS
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
HBS Online
  • Courses
  • Business Essentials
  • Leadership & Management
  • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • Strategy
  • Finance & Accounting
  • Business in Society
  • For Organizations
  • Insights
  • More Info
  • About
  • Media Coverage
  • Founding Donors
  • Leadership Team
  • Careers
  • My Courses
  • My Account
  • Apply Now
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • HBS Online→
  • Business Insights→

Business Insights

Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

 
Filter Results Arrow Down Arrow Up

Topics

Topics

  • Accounting
  • Analytics
  • Business Essentials
  • Business in Society
  • Career Development
  • Communication
  • Community
  • ConneXt
  • Decision-Making
  • Earning Your MBA
  • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • Finance
  • Leadership
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Negotiation
  • News & Events
  • Productivity
  • Staff Spotlight
  • Strategy
  • Student Profiles
  • Technology
  • Work-Life Balance

Courses

Courses

  • Alternative Investments
  • Business Analytics
  • Business Strategy
  • CORe
  • Design Thinking and Innovation
  • Disruptive Strategy
  • Economics for Managers
  • Entrepreneurship Essentials
  • Financial Accounting
  • Global Business
  • Leadership Principles
  • Leading with Finance
  • Management Essentials
  • Negotiation Mastery
  • Organizational Leadership
  • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
  • Strategy Execution
  • Sustainable Business Strategy
  • Sustainable Investing
Subscribe to the Blog
RSS feed

Filters

Topics

Topics

  • Accounting
  • Analytics
  • Business Essentials
  • Business in Society
  • Career Development
  • Communication
  • Community
  • ConneXt
  • Decision-Making
  • Earning Your MBA
  • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • Finance
  • Leadership
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Negotiation
  • News & Events
  • Productivity
  • Staff Spotlight
  • Strategy
  • Student Profiles
  • Technology
  • Work-Life Balance

Courses

Courses

  • Alternative Investments
  • Business Analytics
  • Business Strategy
  • CORe
  • Design Thinking and Innovation
  • Disruptive Strategy
  • Economics for Managers
  • Entrepreneurship Essentials
  • Financial Accounting
  • Global Business
  • Leadership Principles
  • Leading with Finance
  • Management Essentials
  • Negotiation Mastery
  • Organizational Leadership
  • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
  • Strategy Execution
  • Sustainable Business Strategy
  • Sustainable Investing
Subscribe to the Blog
RSS feed

Financial Terminology: 20 Financial Terms to Know

Finance Professional Typing
  • 11 Oct 2018
Lauren Landry Author Staff
tag
  • Career Development
  • Finance
  • Leading with Finance

For non-finance professionals, the thought of talking data, forecasts, and valuations can seem daunting. But developing your financial skills so that you have a financial fluency can help you excel professionally and make a greater impact on your company.

Finance affects every business function. It’s what determines the number of employees you can hire, and dictates your annual budget. It’s what helps you balance short-term expenses with long-term goals, and meaningfully measure your team’s performance. Quite frankly, it’s what keeps your company afloat; an organization can’t operate successfully if it’s not financially sound.

To learn more about why you should further your financial knowledge if you're in a non-finance role, watch the video below featuring Harvard Business School Professor V.G. Narayanan, who teaches the online course Financial Accounting:

View Video

Understanding the financial implications of your decisions and clearly communicating those decisions to key stakeholders can help advance your career. But first, you need to grasp the terminology. Here are 20 financial terms and definitions you should know.

Finance Terms Everyone Should Know

1. Amortization: Amortization is a method of spreading an intangible asset's cost over the course of its useful life. Intangible assets are non-physical assets that are essential to a company, such as a trademark, patent, copyright, or franchise agreement.

2. Assets: Assets are items you own that can provide future benefit to your business, such as cash, inventory, real estate, office equipment, or accounts receivable, which are payments due to a company by its customers. There are different types of assets, including:

  • Current Assets: Which can be converted to cash within a year
  • Fixed Assets: Which can’t immediately be turned into cash, but are tangible items that a company owns and uses to generate long-term income

3. Asset Allocation: Asset allocation refers to how you choose to spread your money across different investment types, also known as asset classes. These include:

  • Bonds: Bonds represent a form of borrowing. When you buy a bond, typically from the government or a corporation, you’re essentially lending them money. You receive periodic interest payments and get back the loaned amount at the time of the bond’s maturity—or the defined term at which the bond can be redeemed.
  • Stocks: A stock is a share of ownership in a public or private company. When you buy stock in a company, you become a shareholder and can receive dividends—the company’s profits—if and when they are distributed.
  • Cash and Cash Equivalents: This refers to any asset in the form of cash, or which can be converted to cash easily in the event it's necessary.

4. Balance Sheet: A balance sheet is an important financial statement that communicates an organization’s worth, or “book value.” The balance sheet includes a tally of the organization’s assets, liabilities, and shareholders’ equity for a given reporting period.

  • The Balance Sheet Equation: Balance sheets are arranged according to the following equation: Assets = Liabilities + Owners’ Equity

5. Capital Gain: A capital gain is an increase in the value of an asset or investment above the price you initially paid for it. If you sell the asset for less than the original purchase price, that would be considered a capital loss.

Related: 6 Ways Understanding Finance Can Help You Excel Professionally

6. Capital Market: This is a market where buyers and sellers engage in the trade of financial assets, including stocks and bonds. Capital markets feature several participants, including:

  • Companies: Firms that sell stocks and bonds to investors
  • Institutional investors: Investors who purchase stocks and bonds on behalf of a large capital base
  • Mutual funds: A mutual fund is an institutional investor that manages the investments of thousands of individuals
  • Hedge funds: A hedge fund is another type of institutional investor, which controls risk through hedging—a process of buying one stock and then shorting a similar stock to make money from the difference in their relative performance

7. Cash Flow: Cash flow refers to the net balance of cash moving in and out of a business at a specific point in time. Cash flow is commonly broken into three categories, including:

  • Operating Cash Flow: The net cash generated from normal business operations
  • Investing Cash Flow: The net cash generated from investing activities, such as securities investments and the purchase or sale of assets
  • Financing Cash Flow: The net cash generated financing a business, including debt payments, shareholders’ equity, and dividend payments

8. Cash Flow Statement: A cash flow statement is a financial statement prepared to provide a detailed analysis of what happened to a company’s cash during a given period of time. This document shows how the business generated and spent its cash by including an overview of cash flows from operating, investing, and financing activities during the reporting period.

9. Compound Interest: This refers to “interest on interest.” Rather, when you’re investing or saving, compound interest is earned on the amount you deposited, plus any interest you’ve accumulated over time. While it can grow your savings, it can also increase your debt; compound interest is charged on the initial amount you were loaned, as well as the expenses added to your outstanding balance over time.

10. Depreciation: Depreciation represents the decrease in an asset’s value. It’s a term commonly used in accounting and shows how much of an asset’s value a business has used over a period of time.

New call-to-action

11. EBITDA: An acronym standing for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization, EBITDA is a commonly used measure of a company’s ability to generate cash flow. To get EBITDA, you would add net profit, interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization together.

12. Equity: Equity, often called shareholders’ equity or owners’ equity on a balance sheet, represents the amount of money that belongs to the owners of a business after all assets and liabilities have been accounted for. Using the accounting equation, shareholder’s equity can be found by subtracting total liabilities from total assets.

13. Income Statement: An income statement is a financial statement that summarizes a business’s income and expenses during a given period of time. An income statement is also sometimes referred to as a profit and loss (P&L) statement.

14. Liabilities: The opposite of assets, liabilities are what you owe other parties, such as bank debt, wages, and money due to suppliers, also known as accounts payable. There are different types of liabilities, including:

  • Current Liabilities: Also known as short-term liabilities, these are what’s due in the next year
  • Long-Term Liabilities: These are financial obligations not due over a year that can be paid off over a longer period of time

15. Liquidity: Liquidity describes how quickly your assets can be converted into cash. Because of that, cash is the most liquid asset. The least liquid assets are items like real estate or land, because they can take weeks or months to sell.

16. Net Worth: You can calculate net worth by subtracting what you own, your assets, with what you owe, your liabilities. The remaining number can help you determine the overall state of your financial health.

17. Profit Margin: Profit margin is a measure of profitability that’s calculated by dividing the net income by revenue or the net profit by sales. Companies often analyze two types of profit margins:

  • Gross Profit Margin: Which typically applies to a specific product or line item rather than an entire business
  • Net Profit Margin: Which typically represents the profitability of an entire company

18. Return on Investment (ROI): Return on Investment is a simple calculation used to determine the expected return of a project or activity in comparison to the cost of the investment, typically shown as a percentage. This measure is often used to evaluate whether a project will be worthwhile for a business to pursue. ROI is calculated using the following equation: ROI = [(Income - Cost) / Cost] * 100

19. Valuation: Valuation is the process of determining the current worth of an asset, company, or liability. There are a variety of ways you can value a business, but regularly repeating the process is helpful, because you’re then ready if ever faced with an opportunity to merge or sell your company, or are trying to seek funding from outside investors.

20. Working Capital: Also known as net working capital, this is the difference between a company’s current assets and current liabilities. Working capital—the money available for daily operations—can help determine an organization’s operational efficiency and short-term financial health.

Access Your Free E-Book: A Manager's Guide to Finance and Accounting | Download Now

Flexing Your Financial Know-How

By mastering these basic finance terms, you can not only gain a more holistic view of your business, but also analyze the performance of your specific team and understand the value and impact of your work on the company.

Are you interested in furthering your financial fluency? Explore our Leading with Finance and our other online finance and accounting courses to gain the skills and confidence needed to make and convey better financial decisions.

This post was updated on September 17, 2021. It was originally published on October 11, 2018.

About the Author

Lauren Landry is the director of marketing and communications for Harvard Business School Online. Prior to joining HBS Online, she worked at Northeastern University and BostInno, where she wrote nearly 3,500 articles covering early-stage tech and education—including the very launch of HBS Online. When she's not at HBS Online, you might find her teaching a course on digital media at Emerson College, chugging coffee, or telling anyone who's willing to listen terribly corny jokes.
 
All FAQs

Top FAQs

How are HBS Online courses delivered?

+–

We offer self-paced programs (with weekly deadlines) on the HBS Online course platform.

Our platform features short, highly produced videos of HBS faculty and guest business experts, interactive graphs and exercises, cold calls to keep you engaged, and opportunities to contribute to a vibrant online community.

Do I need to come to campus to participate in HBS Online programs?

+–

No, all of our programs are 100 percent online, and available to participants regardless of their location.

How do I enroll in a course?

+–

All programs require the completion of a brief application. The applications vary slightly from program to program, but all ask for some personal background information. You can apply for and enroll in programs here. If you are new to HBS Online, you will be required to set up an account before starting an application for the program of your choice.

Our easy online application is free, and no special documentation is required. All applicants must be at least 18 years of age, proficient in English, and committed to learning and engaging with fellow participants throughout the program.

After submitting your application, you should receive an email confirmation from HBS Online. If you do not receive this email, please check your junk email folders and double-check your account to make sure the application was successfully submitted.

Updates to your application and enrollment status will be shown on your Dashboard. We confirm enrollment eligibility within one week of your application.

Does Harvard Business School Online offer an online MBA?

+–

No, Harvard Business School Online offers business certificate programs.

What are my payment options?

+–

We accept payments via credit card, wire transfer, Western Union, and (when available) bank loan. Some candidates may qualify for scholarships or financial aid, which will be credited against the Program Fee once eligibility is determined. Please refer to the Payment & Financial Aid page for further information.

We also allow you to split your payment across 2 separate credit card transactions or send a payment link email to another person on your behalf. If splitting your payment into 2 transactions, a minimum payment of $350 is required for the first transaction.

In all cases, net Program Fees must be paid in full (in US Dollars) to complete registration.

What are the policies for refunds and deferrals?

+–

After enrolling in a program, you may request a withdrawal with refund (minus a $100 nonrefundable enrollment fee) up until 24 hours after the start of your program. Please review the Program Policies page for more details on refunds and deferrals. If your employer has contracted with HBS Online for participation in a program, or if you elect to enroll in the undergraduate credit option of the Credential of Readiness (CORe) program, note that policies for these options may differ.

 

Sign up for News & Announcements

Subject Areas

  • Business Essentials
  • Leadership & Management
  • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • Strategy
  • Finance & Accounting
  • Business & Society

Quick Links

  • FAQs
  • Contact Us
  • Request Info
  • Apply Now

About

  • About Us
  • Media Coverage
  • Founding Donors
  • Leadership Team
  • Careers @ HBS Online

Legal

  • Legal
  • Policies
Harvard Business School
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College
  • Site Map
  • Trademark Notice
  • Digital Accessibility