One of the drawbacks of a balance sheet is that it doesn't give a complete picture of the financial health of a company unless it is combined with other financial statements like the income statement and the cash flow statement. Another limitation is that it looks at the financial activities at a point time (it gives a summary of what has occurred) and does not tell you what has been occurring prior to a particular date; this makes it difficult to know the performance of the company unless you combine several balance sheets to analyze.