There are three main sections of a P&L statement; revenues, expenditures and the bottom line. Basically any listed line item on a P&L statement is either a revenue or an expenditure. Under each of those two umbrellas there are a few basic categories...
Revenue
All the sales that you make
Other payments made to your business. For example, selling old machinery or property, or a tax refund. Those are usually one-time revenue generation events.
Expenditures
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) - When you sell a shirt for $40, you take in that money under the revenue column, but you don’t “make” $40. Say the cost of the shirt to you at wholesale was $10. That means you made $30 profit and the COGS is $10. In manufacturing, the COGS will be the materials plus the time to produce it and for a service company it will be the man hours devoted.
OPEX - OPEX is short for “operational expenditures” and basically a fancy way of saying “what it takes to run your business in addition to COGS.” OPEX includes things like employee salaries; meals and entertainment; travel and training; office space rental and utilities costs; computer hardware and software; maintenance expenses; marketing communication and advertising expenses; telephone and internet services; insurance costs; external consultant fees… the list, depending on your type of business, goes on and on.
Depreciation - The cost of hard goods like computers, phones, machinery, or a vehicle will be allocated over the length of time that you own the asset. That’s not to say that you don’t have to pay for it up front, but the loss in value each year can be accounted for as a loss to your business come tax time.
Profit - The bottom line (and where they get the phrase “the bottom line is...”) on a P&L statement, is the profit line. Finally, just what you’ve been waiting for! As mentioned, your business’ profit is, at a high level, revenue minus expenses. This is what you really make money-wise and for the most part you can stop right here.
But for those that are now enchanted by the wonderful world of P&L statements, there are actually a few types of profit...
Gross Profit = Revenue - COGS. You will pay for all of your business expenses from salary to rent from this pool of money.
EBIT (Earnings Before Interest & Tax) = Revenue - (COGS + OPEX). Yes, that looks like a scary algebra problem, but it’s simply “what did you sell” minus “how much you paid for your inventory” and “how much it costs to run your business.” It’s sort of the best performance indicator for your business so if you want to know how well you’re really doing, look at this number.
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation, & Amortization). Even scarier, right? Don’t worry, this is just EBIT minus your depreciation. Depreciation isn’t truly a cash outflow—you aren’t losing spendable dollars here. While it’s important to track and take the appropriate tax deductions, for P&L purposes EBITDA is just filtering out the remnants of old decisions because it deals just with what you spent on capital expenditures in the past. It really doesn’t have to do with the health of your business’s cash flow today. Depreciation and Amortization are non-cash items, so they really don’t have a great impact on your business’s day to day cash flow health. But, EBITDA is a good way to gauge profitability.
Generating a P&L
Creating a profit and loss statement can be daunting, especially if you’re starting from scratch, using a pen and paper, or a basic spreadsheet. Since the accuracy of the information in your P&L statement is so critical to the success of your business, it’s often best to use accounting software (like Kashoo!) to help you manage it all. (BONUS TIP: The best way to generate a great P&L is to be diligent about capturing your revenues and expenses as you incur them.)
Generating a P&L in Kashoo, either on the web or on the iPad, is a snap. Here’s a quick video that shows you how to rock a P&L (and other reports!) in Kashoo…