Dates are really important when you are reading financial statements. Let's start by looking at the balance sheets. Here I've got two balance sheets. The first one is at the end of period one so let's say that's the 31st of December year one. And the second one, balance sheet at the end of year two, December 31st year two. A balance sheet describes a snapshot at the period end. It really tells me the company's assets, liabilities and equity at just that moment in time. But what if I wanted to understand what happens in between the two balance sheets? Well, the income statements and the cashflow statements are going to help you out. They're both summaries for the period, and if you looked at the dates at the top of these items, it will say a summary for the period ended year two. A good example is cash. Your balance sheet, at the end of period one might have cash of 100. The balance sheet at the end of period two might have cash of 120. What happens between the 100 and 120 is going to be described in much more detail on the cashflow statements showing your cash going in and out. Another reason that dates are really important is when you look at the footnotes. Now, your footnotes might be a couple of pages or many hundreds of pages and it can often be very difficult to decide whether you are looking at the balance sheet item or an income statement or of a cashflow statement item. The dates can help. If the footnote says that you are looking at a specific date chances are you are looking at a balance sheet item. Alternatively, if the footnote says that you are looking for the period or for the period ended at a specific date then that is going to be an income statement or cashflow statement item.