There are two statements marked as Assertion (A) and Reason (R). Mark your answer as per the options given below.

Assertion (A):  Analysis of financial statements suffers from the limitation of being an analysis of historical financial information.
Reason (R): Although financial statement analysis is of historical financial information, it provides a base for planning.

Assertion (A) and Reason (R) are correct but the Reason (R) is not the correct explanation of Assertion (A).

Though financial analysis is quite helpful in determining financial strengths and weaknesses of a firm, it is based on the information available in financial statements. As such, the financial analysis also suffers from various limitations of financial statements. Hence, the analyst must be conscious of the impact of price level changes, window dressing of financial statements, changes in accounting policies of a firm, accounting concepts and conventions, personal judgement, etc. Some other limitations of financial analysis are:
1. Financial analysis does not consider price level changes.
2. Financial analysis may be misleading without the knowledge of the changes in accounting procedure followed by a firm.
3. Financial analysis is just a study of reports of the company.
4. Monetary information alone is considered in financial analysis while non-monetary aspects are ignored.
5. The financial statements are prepared on the basis of accounting concept, as such, it does not reflect the current position.
* Transactions are initially recorded at their cost. This is a concern when reviewing the balance sheet, where the values of assets and liabilities may change over time. Some items, such as marketable securities, are altered to match changes in their market values, but other items, such as fixed assets, do not change. Thus, the balance sheet could be misleading if a large part of the amount presented is based on historical costs.