Working with Financial Data

Abstract

Individuals and organizations work with financial data on a daily basis. While accountants are interested in money from an accrual basis, individuals and financial managers in organizations are usually more interested in money from a cash basis. That is, they are interested in revenues and expenses only with respect to the actual inflows and outflows of cash. Both individuals and organizations maintain solvency by acquiring the cash flows necessary to satisfy their obligations and to obtain the assets needed to achieve their goals. In this chapter, you will learn how to use R to analyze financial data, and we will primarily adopt the perspective of cash flow rather than accrual.