A bankruptcy proceeding in the business activities of a company does not represent a moment in time but a process. It aims to settle the creditors of the debtor collectively by liquidating the debtor’s assets and then distributing the collected funds to the creditors. The purpose of a bankruptcy proceeding is to resolve the problems that have resulted from bad management of a company and to rebuild the trust between the debtor and the creditors. To initiate a bankruptcy proceeding, at least one of the two conditions has to be fulfilled and these are the debtor’s inability to meet current financial obligations (illiquidity) and excessive indebtedness (insolvency). This paper aims to prove the importance of hidden losses and anticipated gains in bankruptcy proceedings and to determine whether they are the most common form of manipulation. The subject of the paper is a description of the implementation of the bankruptcy procedure, but also an analysis of the operations of companies in bankruptcy using examples from practice. The above is achieved by using both primary and secondary data sources. The importance and contribution of this work are evident in the empirical part, considering that it explains the problems of operating companies in bankruptcy, and based on it the conclusion is that hidden losses and anticipated gains are the most common form of manipulation of different information in financial statements. It is important to point out that all the above is achieved by overestimating the assets (appreciation) or underestimating liabilities (depreciation), which has a significant impact on the financial outcome of a company, different macroeconomic indicators as well as the degree of the settlement of creditors.