Economic evaluation

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The business evaluation (BWA) is a reporting system based on the company data of the financial accounting , especially for small and medium-sized companies , which contains the earnings situation of a company and economic key figures .

General

The BWA requires a company to keep accounts . This includes not only small businesses but also dealers and craftsmen . You have the generally accepted accounting principles to be observed, need about every business transaction accounting documents issue and that after account assignment posted . This means that the business transactions are recorded by accounting . The accounting data can then be evaluated by a company's tax advisor or auditor using software (e.g. DATEV, Wolters Kluwer, etc.) that represents the BWA in the narrower sense.

history

The development of the BWA can be traced back to the German service company DATEV. Shortly after the company was founded in February 1966, when it introduced its data processing in February 1969, DATEV published its “Standard BWA No. 1”, the BWA version that is still in use and most frequently used today. From the beginning, the BWA system was intended as a reporting system for assessing the earnings position of companies. DATEV does not offer this service directly, but through tax consultants, lawyers and auditors. These receive access to the DATEV network and can do the accounting for their clients there. The management consultant Peter Knief has dealt with partial aspects of the BWA in numerous books and specialist articles since 1982. Since 2015, Knief has placed the individual BWA in the foreground, in particular BWA SLY and BWA MINIMUM ANALYSIS, in order to better advise medium-sized companies. A BWA TRANSPARENCY will determine approx. 30 business indicators. In this way, the first possibilities of the insolvency prognosis are created via the company comparison.

In the meantime, DATEV has created a variety of additional evaluations around the standard BWA ( controlling report , cash flow statement , as well as industry-specific BWA for doctors, tax consultants , lawyers , opticians , automotive trade). These DATEV-BWA were taken over by other accounting providers. Today the BWA is available as software for operational reporting.

Legal issues

A bookkeeping obligation results from the commercial ( § 238 HGB , § 242 HGB) and tax law ( § 140 AO , § 141 AO). After that, the accounting requirement applies to all merchants and moreover commercial entrepreneurs and agriculture and forestry annually with sales of more than 600,000 euros. However, there is no legal obligation to draw up a BWA. However, the entrepreneur is interested in being kept up-to-date on the earnings situation and capital structure of his company in order to base decisions on this for the purpose of any adjustments to data changes that have occurred. Since there are usually no controlling evaluations in small and medium-sized companies , the BWA are often the only available monthly control evaluations . In addition, certain creditors may have an interest in being informed about the company's situation at any time, so that the BWA can also have a publicity effect.

content

The BWA only records business transactions that relate to the income statement . Therefore, all expenses and income as well as sales are included in the BWA . It is structured according to the staggered form of the income statement ( Section 275 (2) HGB) and therefore begins with sales, followed by gross profit , the types of costs (such as personnel costs , material costs ), interest expenses / interest income , taxes and the preliminary result . During the year BWA is based on a "soft month-end closing" ( English soft close ) because closing transactions as deferred income are still missing. It can be created on a monthly basis. In a second step, this company data can be used to determine business key figures that can be used for a sector comparison.

The standard BWA No. 1 is always uncommented and therefore cannot be compared with an annual report . In addition, they do not contain any balance sheet figures and are therefore not comparable with annual financial statements .

Publicity effect

In addition to the entrepreneur, also creditors such as credit institutions or important suppliers may be interested in a BWA . Credit institutions can make the submission of the (monthly or quarterly) BWA a legal obligation of their borrower through their credit conditions ( covenants ) . Then the BWA is one of the loan documents that are subjected to a creditworthiness check according to § 18 KWG and lead to a rating after a balance sheet analysis . However, the BWA is only part of the loan documents; it cannot replace the annual financial statements that must also be submitted .

Importance for the economy

The economic and microeconomic importance of the BWA is great: DATEV and the tax consultancy industry alone print over 2.5 million such reports every month; Entrepreneurs, financial authorities and banks have to rely on their informative value. The informative value of the BWA strongly depends on the accounting behavior of the accountants. If no delimitations are made during the year, no monthly depreciation is posted, inventories are not determined or not recorded promptly, the informative value is low. In addition, the most frequently used standard BWA 01 is not suitable for many types of business because it is based on the business model of the retail business . Other types of business are only insufficiently represented. The peculiarities of the growing e-commerce business segment can hardly be taken into account. In particular, the Internet costs, the costs for the website and the costs for returns are of particular importance, while space costs play a subordinate role.

Significance and evaluation capability

Business evaluations must be meaningful and capable of evaluation by

  • Designed to be legally neutral
  • Compatible with an industry comparison (DATEV company comparison or Destatis )
  • Map scale-neutral
  • Allow representations integrated with the company's accounting and statistical data
  • can be standardized with a corresponding intelligent structure.

In addition, time series , previous year comparisons and graphical representations are essential quality criteria. If the inventory changes that are significant in the profit and loss account are not taken into account in the BWA, the informative value of the BWA decreases massively.

literature

  • Manfred Bösinghaus, analysis and evaluation of DATEV-BWA , 4th revised edition, Stuttgart 2008
  • Gertrud K. Deffner, quick introduction BWA , Haufe-Lexware, 3rd edition 2011, ISBN 9783648002940
  • Michael Heil, DATEV BWA and controlling report - reading and understanding . Verlag DATEV eG, Nuremberg 2013, ISBN 9783944505015
  • Peter Knief, IT-supported individual business management evaluations, possibilities of external IT - illustrated using the example of DATEV , DATEV-Schriften Nr. 4, Cologne 1984
  • Peter Knief, Dynamic considerations of the company's economic situation, DATEV publications No. 9, Cologne 1988
  • Peter Knief, On the determination and transparency of debt service capacity in the analysis of the financing of SMEs for BASEL III , in DER BETRIEB 2014, p. 1561 ff.
  • Peter Knief, The urgent replacement of the standard BWA No. 1 by a "BWA Sly", shown using the example of DATEV, simultaneously for all data centers , in: DStR 2015, p. 86 ff.
  • Peter Knief, The dynamic status and working capital , in DER BETRIEB 2015, p. 257 ff.
  • Peter Knief, BWA FiDeStAn - financial, contribution margin and tax analysis, PART 1 and Part 2 in DER BETRIEB 2016, p. 15 ff. And p. 30 ff.
  • Peter Knief, A BWA Minimum Analysis , A logical consequence of the digitization of accounting and the various legal requirements, in StBp 2017, p. 21ff.
  • Peter Knief / Christian Reichling, Well prepared for Basel II, The DATEV Rating BWA as a yardstick for a new transparency . Credit & Rating Practice, 1/2003
  • Christian Reichling / W. Ehlert, New Bar for More Transparency - The New DATEV Rating BWA , in: Die Steuerberatung, 2003, pp. 87 ff.
  • Rudolph Siegbert, How do you read a BWA? (published in constant new editions since 1975)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Wolfgang Goetzke / Peter Knief, External Controlling - An Approach to Securing the Livelihood of Medium-Sized Enterprises , in: Betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung und Praxis 5/82, 1982, pp. 408–426.
  2. Egon and Stephan Grunwald, Credit Analysis in Corporate Banking , 1999, p. 116
  3. Detlef Hellenkamp, Bankwirtschaft , 2015, p. 100
  4. Ann-Kristin Achleitner / Oliver Everling / Karl August Niggemann (eds.), Financial rating: Design options for improving creditworthiness , 2007, p. 93 f.