balance the sheets

present singular third person balances the sheets · participle present balancing the sheets · participle past balanced the sheets · past balanced the sheets

1. To improve the financial state of an organization or individual so they are no longer operating at a loss.

   Both deficit reduction and systemic reform, you see, require identifying "losers" — those who must give up something to balance the sheets.

   2011, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Budget, Concurrent Resolution on the Budget Fiscal Year 2012, U.S. Government Printing Office, page 281

   2 more examples

   This is reduced to turning the screw on the workers in search of what is described as higher productivity and sustaining foreign competition, but what amounts to increasing the wealth of the capitalist class, overaccumulation of capital, economic crises and a need to turn the screw even more to 'balance the sheets', which according to Marx cannot be balanced.

   2015, Ewa Mazierska, From Self-fulfilment to Survival of the Fittest, Berghahn Books, →ISBN, page 225

   Now you're asking us to become commercial, to look at the cost-benefits and all that sort of thing - to balance the sheets, and that's not what we're here for, that's not where our mentality lies.

   2017, Marcella Milana, Sue Webb, John Holford, Richard Waller, Peter Jarvis, The Palgrave International Handbook on Adult and Lifelong Education and Learning, Springer, →ISBN, page 126