Financial Statements
The profit and loss shows what the business earned and spent over a period, and the balance sheet what it owns and owes on a date. For sales, purchases and expenses in detail, see the operational reports. Both come straight from the posted entries of your books, so they always agree with the trial balance and with each other: the net income on the balance sheet is the net profit of the profit and loss.
| Menu | Reports > Financial statements > Profit and loss, Balance sheet |
| Permission | View the profit and loss and the balance sheet (anyone who can view journal entries can too) |
| Feature | Accounting, with Reports |
What you see depends on your role. If the menu, a button or a setting on this page is missing, ask your administrator to give you the permission listed above or to turn on the feature. Only administrators can turn features on and change site settings.
Run the profit and loss
- Open Reports and choose Profit and loss under Financial statements.
- Choose the Date range, such as This quarter or Last year, or a custom range.
- Optionally choose Compare with:
- Previous period: the period of the same length just before. A quarter compares with the quarter before it, a month with the month before.
- Previous year: the same dates a year earlier.
- Each month: one column per month of the range (up to 24).
- Check Summary to see only top-level accounts, with their subaccounts added in.
- Select Show.
The cards at the top give the income, the gross profit, the operating expenses and the net profit, with the margins as a percentage of income. The statement lists every account with activity:
| Line | What it is |
|---|---|
| Income | Your sales and other operating revenue |
| Cost of sales | What you paid for the goods you sold, or the cost of the services you rendered |
| Gross profit | Income − cost of sales |
| Operating expenses | Rent, wages, utilities and the other costs of running the business |
| Operating profit | Gross profit − operating expenses |
| Other income, Other expenses | Income and costs outside the business's operations, such as interest or a gain on an asset sale |
| Net profit | Operating profit + other income − other expenses |
An account with subaccounts shows its total, with the subaccounts indented under it; anything posted to the account itself is shown as (other) under them, so the lines add up. A section with nothing in it is left out, but the gross, operating and net profit are always shown, even at zero. With two columns, Change is the first column less the second. Amounts in parentheses are negative.
Run the balance sheet
- Open Reports and choose Balance sheet under Financial statements.
- Choose a Date range: the balance sheet is on its last day.
- Optionally Compare with the end of the previous month, the same date a year earlier, or each month end of the fiscal year.
- Select Show.
| Section | What it is |
|---|---|
| Assets | What the business owns: cash, receivables, fixed assets less their accumulated depreciation |
| Liabilities | What it owes: vendors, sales tax, payroll |
| Equity | What belongs to the owners: their equity accounts, plus the retained earnings of prior years and the net income of the fiscal year |
You do not close the books at year end: the balance sheet works out the earnings of the past fiscal years and of the current one for you, using the fiscal year of your business profile. Balanced at the top says Yes when the assets equal the liabilities and equity, which is always the case for posted entries.
Export a statement
Select Export, then Export CSV or Export Excel (.xlsx). The export has the same columns as the page.
See also Trial balance and Periods.