Common Size Balance Sheet

Common Size Balance Sheet

A balance sheet in which the items are expressed as percentages of total assets or total liabilities instead of as dollar amounts. For example, a common-size statement may express all cash as 10% of total assets, fixed assets as 25%, and so forth. A common-size statement is most useful when one attempts to compare a company to similar companies of different size or when one is comparing year-to-year variations in capital structure in the same company.