By Stacie Clifford Kitts, CPA

If you are looking to compare your business with other business in your industry, here is your opportunity.  This is actually an excellent way to help you to know if certain aspects of your business meet an industry average.  This knowledge tells us how your company is performing compared to other businesses in your sector and can help with planning and strategic decisions. 

Now there may be some math involved as you will need to do some comparisons.  For example, if you want to know the average amount of cash at year-end compared to total assets of a company in your sector, you would simply divide total cash by total assets noted on the industry chart – get the percentage and then compare that to your company. 

You can look up your business by the following categories:

 Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, and Hunting
 Mining 
 Utilities
 Construction
 Manufacturing
 Wholesale and Retail Trade
 Transportation and Warehousing
 Information
 Finance and Insurance
 Real Estate and Rental and Leasing
 Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
 Management of Companies (Holding Companies)
Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services
 Educational Services
 Health Care and Social Assistance
 Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation
 Accommodation and Food Services
 Other Services
 Not Allocable

The 2007 Corporation Source Book is now available in two formats, a Comma Separated Value (.csv) file and Excel tables.  The purpose of the .CSV file, which contains only numeric characters, is to provide users a way to download the entire Source Book in one file and use in most statistical software packages.  Download and file use instructions can be found on the website.  The Source Book presents balance sheet, income statement, tax, and other selected items by size of total assets for all returns with and without net income.  Statistical tables are available by industrial sectors, major groups within a sector, and minor industries within a major group.  Industry detail is based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).