when something in financial statements is referred to as other it typically means that it is unusual does not fit into major categories and is considered to be relatively minor in the case of liabilities the other tag can refer to things like intercompany borrowings and sales taxes 
investors can discover what a company s other liabilities are by checking out the footnotes in its financial statements advantages of total liabilitiesin isolation total liabilities serve little purpose other than to potentially compare how a company s obligations stack up against a competitor operating in the same sector however when used with other figures total liabilities can be a useful metric for analyzing a company s operations one example is in an entity s debt to equity ratio used to evaluate a company s financial leverage this ratio reflects the ability of shareholder equity to cover all outstanding debts in the event of a business downturn a similar ratio called debt to assets compares total liabilities to total assets to show how assets are financed special considerationsa larger amount of total liabilities is not in and of itself a financial indicator of poor economic quality of an entity based on prevailing interest rates available to the company it may be most favorable for the business to acquire debt assets by incurring liabilities however the total liabilities of a business have a direct relationship with the creditworthiness of an entity in general if a company has relatively low total liabilities it may gain favorable interest rates on any new debt it undertakes from lenders as lower total liabilities lessen the chance of default risk 