(FORTUNE Small Business) – When the economy stalls and times get tough, few disciplines are more critical for a company's survival than finance. When sales plummet or investment capital suddenly gets yanked, understanding how to husband your cash or focus on your most profitable activities becomes ever more valuable. True, many books about managing money are dry and abstract. They drone on, in their best Ben Stein monotone, about net present value and the acceleration of depreciation, until an exasperated reader decides to just call an accountant. Yet there are exceptions. The following books won't get literary awards, but they can help any business owner make savvy financial decisions.

--MANAGING BY THE NUMBERS, by Chuck Kremer and Ron Rizzuto with John Case (Perseus Publishing; 2000, $16), is more than just a primer on reading financial statements. It is an insightful tool that shows entrepreneurs how to manage the three bottom lines of a business' financial performance: net profit, operating cash flow, and return on assets. Then it notes how the three are inexorably linked--for example, how the inventory line on the balance sheet will be changed not only by the cost-of-goods-sold line on the income statement but also by the inventory-paid line on the cash-flow statement. Understanding such fundamentals can help any CEO monitor performance so he can take the actions needed to improve cash flow.

--SELF-DEFENSE FOR SMALL BUSINESS, by Wilbur M. Yegge (John Wiley & Sons, 1995; $17.95), is a troubleshooting guide. While the author's no-nonsense approach can sometimes sag into dryness, his thorough grasp of finance as a managerial imperative more than compensates for the tone. More hands-on than the other two books reviewed here, this one covers such territory as how to meet profit targets, deal with banks, and value your company. The book has two excellent appendixes: "17 Tips for Negotiating," and "22 Jump-Start Thoughts About Buying or Selling a Business."

--THE SEVEN LAWS OF MONEY, by Michael Phillips (Shambala, 1997; $10.95), can help anyone develop a healthy attitude toward money. This classic among entrepreneurs since the first edition was published in the mid-1970s has a touchy-feely approach but still belongs among left-side-of-the-brain selections. Its laws include "Money has its own rules" (you must keep track of it through records and budgets) and the simple "There are worlds without money" (art, music, etc.). Phillips points out in his short tome the relation that money has to our psychic clutter, and notes how we act irrationally concerning this abstract stuff. His goal: to demystify our notions about money and explain how it can be used to achieve greater things than merely making a profit.

--Tom Ehrenfeld

Tom Ehrenfeld is the author of The Startup Garden: How Growing a Business Grows You (McGraw-Hill, $18.95).