
This represents the total cost associated with the products and services you use to serve customers, like the cost of acquiring inventory for the given period. It should include the revenue you earned from primary business activity alongside non-operating revenue and gains, like those relating to the sale of business assets. Your revenue in the P&L Statement represents the total turnover or net sales for the given period. It is so important it shows you the viability of your entire business model and it offers a lot of crucial data for cutting costs and increasing revenue in the long-term. But, what else can a P&L Statement show you? At the end of the day, a P&L Statement goes beyond a tool for accounting and working out your taxes.Ī P&L is fundamental in working out your break-even point (how many sales do we need just to cover our costs), and in scenario planning (if we increase price by x% what would that do to our sales, if we discount our price on this product what would that do?)

You already know that a P&L Statement will show you your total revenue and your total expenses along with whether your business was profitable during a specific time period. Still, to be a sustainable business your business needs to see a positive (upward) trend, meaning that you are profiting more and more each time you generate a new P&L Statement. With that said, losing money isn’t uncommon, especially for businesses during their first few months or years of operation.

The hope is that your business will end up with a positive number a profit, rather than a negative number a loss.

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What is an Income Statement?Īn Income Statement is a type of financial statement that looks to quickly summarize a business' revenues, and expenses over a specific period. Here’s what you need to know to better understand how your business is doing financially. If you find yourself in that position, that’s okay. The one that everyone loves to look at is the Income Statement, better known as a Profit and Loss Statement (P&L) but other than a surface understanding, this financial report remains mysterious to many business owners on how it can be used to improve your business. Every business should strive to better understand their financial performance so that they can continuously improve it.
