Week 10 Reading Reflection

In the section on revenue, something the author stated surprised me. I had never even thought how revenue could be overstated; you sold this much at this cost, how could you have found a bigger number than what was true? But I had never even thought to take into accounts returned items or discounts. I especially always had thought of discounts as helping a company as it's advertising that draws clients that may not have normally been clients, but it completely makes sense how this could affect your true revenue amount.
Many parts of this chapter were a little confusing to me because I'm really bad at math and financial terms. Luckily the author did a decent job explaining many things, but it was almost an overload of information and by the end of the chapter I'm not sure if I really understood how to factor all of these different pieces together for a successful business. A lot of the parts that talked about taxes I didn't understand because I have very little experience in paying taxes so far in my life, so I didn't really understand what taxes were paid for (what things you had to pay taxes on/didn't have to pay taxes on).
Many parts of this chapter the author talked about how there were these different "projected costs." There were estimated taxes, projected sales, advertising costs, etc. How do you determine these numbers and how do you determine which things you should assume, or do you just make assumed costs for every single category? Another question that I was wondering throughout the chapter was how do you decide if advertising is worth it or how much advertising to use? It's hard to see the payoffs of advertisements, so are you just supposed to use surveys and hope customers will take the time do fill these out for you, or are there other methods to determine your best advertisement methods?
Being that this chapter was all about financials, I have no idea if the author was wrong about things or missed any part of the financial side of having a business since I've never had a business. It honestly seemed like he must've hit every single detail because of how many things the author kept listing off that I have no idea how one person (or a team of owners) could even maintain all of these actions. This chapter really made me realize how hard it must be to be a small business-owner where you don't really have the funds or space for a financial department and it falls on you.