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Definition of Current liabilities

Current liabilities are short term debt obligations that a company has to pay within a year. Current assets are used to pay off these liabilities. The amount of total current liabilities, given on the balance sheet, is also used to calculate working capital of a company.

Current liabilities are shown on the liability side on a company’s balance sheet as below:

Highlighting current liabilities on a balance sheet

The excess amount of these liabilities over total current assets indicates the inefficiency of management. Put it simple it shows that management is unable to meet its short term liabilities on time. So, management has to take a good care of the balance between current assets and liabilities.

List of current liabilities:

Below is the detailed list of these liabilities:

  • Accounts payable,
  • Sales taxes payable,
  • Payroll taxes payable,
  • Income taxes payable,
  • Interest payable,
  • Bank account overdrafts,
  • Accrued expenses,
  • Customer deposits,
  • Dividends declared,
  • Short-term loans,
  • Current maturities of long-term debt etc.

 

Current ratio – Meaning & formula

Current ratio is one of the liquidity ratios, shows the relationship between current assets and current liabilities of a firm. Current ratio indicates a firm’s commitment to meet its short-term debt obligations.

If the value of this ratio is greater than 1, then it indicates that the company is in position to pay its current liabilities by liquidating its current assets. A value of lesser than 1 indicates that the company can not pay its current liabilities by liquidating all of its current assets.

This ratio is also known as ‘working capital ratio’.

Formula for the calculation of current ratio:

This ratio is calculated by dividing the amount of current assets by current liabilities as shown below

current ratio

Example:

Let’s suppose XYZ ltd reports total current assets of INR 80,000 at the end of financial year 2015 – 16 and current liability of INR 75,000.

Working capital ratio (for the financial year 2016 – 17) = 80,000 / 75,000 = 1.07

This shows that company is in position to pay its current liabilities.

Debt to equity ratio – Definition & Formula

Debt to equity ratio is one of the important ratios, indicating the solvency of a firm. This ratio represents the relationship between borrowed funds (Debt) and owners’ capital (Equity) used by a firm. The ratio is used to measure the long term financial position of a business enterprise.

Formula for calculating debt to equity ratio:

The given formula can be used for this purpose:

formula for debt to equity ratio

Ideal ratio:

Experts of finance suggest that a company should neither totally rely on equity nor on debt. But there should be an appropriate amount of balance between these two. It would be better for a company to maintain a balance of 2:1 for this ratio. In other words, a company needs to use as much as double the debt than equity.

Because this ratio is used to check the balance between external (Borrower’s) and  internal (Owner’s) fund, it is also known as ‘external- internal ratio’.