Con-triFree guides
Guides I use when explaining money to clients. Enter your name and email, and the download link appears on the next screen.
How the three financial statements connect
The balance sheet, the profit and loss statement and the cash flow statement on one page, with the checkpoints owners should look at first. Profit is not cash, and this sheet shows why. PDF, 1 page.
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What Are the Three Financial Statements?
How to read the balance sheet, the income statement and the cash flow statement, and how the three connect. It ends with simple checkpoints that help owners and investors spot problems such as running out of cash while profitable. PDF, 6 pages.
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What Is Cash Flow?
Why a company can be profitable while its cash runs down, traced through five places where cash disappears and a made-up company that loses 11.6M yen of cash in a profitable year. It ends with three numbers an owner should check every month and practical steps to avoid running short. PDF, 6 pages.
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What Is Director Pay?
How owner-directors in Japan set their own pay under the tax rules, and how one decision moves company profit, corporate tax, social insurance and personal take-home pay together. It also covers the retirement allowance, the Small Business Mutual Aid scheme and where to keep money left in the company. PDF, 6 pages.
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The Owner's Money Sheet
A two-sided worksheet that puts your company's money on the left and your own money on the right, so you can see how much to keep in the company and how much to pay yourself. It adds points to review on cash, director pay and your retirement allowance, plus the basics of retirement allowance tax in Japan. PDF, 2 pages.
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What Is a Sales Forecast?
Why sales forecasts keep missing, and how to build a pipeline that gives the same number whoever reads it, using stages defined by facts and amount times likelihood. It also shows why the forecast is really a number about company money, with a checklist for making it a weekly habit. PDF, 6 pages.
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What Are Sales KPIs?
How KGI, CSF and KPI fit together, and why jumping straight to activity counts leaves sales flat. A fictional company example shows how to pick the lever that matters, choose usable KPIs and review them every week. PDF, 6 pages.
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What Are Interest Rates?
A plain guide to what interest rates are, how they move with exchange rates and prices, and why Japan's rates are at a 10-year high. It closes with the author's view of Japan's rate outlook and what it may mean for investing. PDF, 7 pages.
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What Makes US Stocks Attractive?
Why US stocks have outperformed Japanese stocks over 30 years, looking at demographics, innovation and geopolitical risk. It also covers valuation and currency risks, and how to use ROE, ROIC and WACC to judge a company's health. PDF, 8 pages.
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What Are Guidance and Earnings Calls?
How US companies report quarterly results, what guidance and conference calls are, and why the gap against expectations moves share prices. It shows how a management team's guidance style can be read, with checkpoints for each earnings season. PDF, 5 pages.
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What Is the Order Book?
A plain guide to reading the order book: the spread, depth and order imbalance, and why a thin book means buying higher or selling lower than you expected. It also covers US extended-hours trading as seen from Japan, its main risks, and how to read the book around earnings releases. PDF, 6 pages.
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What Is AI Inference?
AI spending is shifting from training models to running them, and Gartner forecasts that inference overtakes training in AI cloud spending in 2026. This paper explains why inference is a race of distance, how distance also shows up as cloud data transfer fees, and what to look at in the companies that run relay points close to users. PDF, 6 pages.
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Lump Sum or Pension? Choosing How to Receive Your Retirement Allowance
A one-sheet comparison of taking a retirement allowance in Japan as a lump sum or as a pension, covering tax category, cash in hand and effects on resident tax and insurance premiums. It also covers the order of iDeCo and company payouts, a fill-in table and a checklist to use before you decide. PDF, 2 pages.
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What Is a Scholarship?
A student guide to scholarships in Japan, focused on JASSO: the difference between grants and loans, the three JASSO types, how to apply and where students get stuck. It shows how much a loan really costs to repay and what to do before you fall into arrears. PDF, 6 pages.
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Email maishida@con-tri.jp