Financial ratios offer a company's stakeholders a way to evaluate and compare their performance against other similar businesses in their industry. Ratios measure the relationship between two or more components of financial statements. In general, financial ratios can be broken down into main categories, such as profitability or return on investment, liquidity, debt or leverage, market, and operating or efficiency - with several specific ratio calculations prescribed within each. This short course will focus on some common efficiency ratios. This basic overview may be appropriate for professionals at all organizational levels.