We present an extended theoretical background of so-called fluence scan (f-scan or F-scan) method, which is frequently being used for offline characterization of focused short-wavelength (EUV, soft X-ray, and hard X-ray) laser beams [J. Chalupský et al., Opt. Express 18, 27836 (2010)]. The method exploits ablative imprints in various solids to visualize iso-fluence beam contours at different fluence and/or clip levels. An f-scan curve (clip level as a function of the corresponding iso-fluence contour area) can be generated for a general non-Gaussian beam. As shown in this paper, fluence scan encompasses important information about energy distribution within the beam profile, which may play an essential role in laser-matter interaction research employing intense non-ideal beams. Here we for the first time discuss fundamental properties of the f-scan function and its inverse counterpart (if-scan). Furthermore, we extensively elucidate how it is related to the effective beam area, energy distribution, and to the so called Liu's dependence [J. M. Liu, Opt. Lett. 7, 196 (1982)]. A new method of the effective area evaluation based on weighted inverse f-scan fit is introduced and applied to real data obtained at the SCSS (SPring-8 Compact SASE Source) facility.