Ways To Prepare Profit And Loss Statement
In this modern and digital era, technology has become so advanced that human being is trying to get benefit from new innovations in their work life. In past businesses were on small scale that can easily be deal by doing paper work manually but now businesses are on next level and different organizations are involved in different businesses so the companies need to save data in computer and use different software’s and application to smooth their work life.
Technology has made human life easy then ever before by introducing new machines and software’s that make work more convenient. There are different businesses running around the world and to maintain the check and balance of all the things in businesses companies need to do accounting so that all the financial planning’s and budgets can easily be look after by any responsible person.
Many businesses owners don’t show interest in accounting but that is the basic step which lead the company to huge loss. Understanding of accounting is crystal clear that is you are going to check the difference between success and failure. if you hire a person who is expert in accounting than you must be sure that you are leading your company toward success.
Doesn’t matter what is the scale of your business either small or large but the basic thing you need to understand that all businesses has three financial statement. Balance sheets, cash flow sheets and profit and loss statements. Collectively these financial statements are something complex and annoying but if divide them separately and work on them, then you will find out these are quite easy and important for a company.
Fundamental financial documents of any company are designed just to check how much money your company is making monthly and annually and this can only be checked by analyzing the difference between how much money we bring in to the company and how much money we spend. Accounting play’s pivotal role in the financial growth and check and balance of any company.
What Is Profit And Loss Statement?
Profit and loss is just the numerical sheet that represents the overall income and expense statement of the company to measure the overall business revenue during a specific time period. This is done just to analyze that at which level the company or business is standing on and how much we need to earn or invest more to earn more profit from our business.
If profit and loss sheet tells that the income is more than expenses, that means your company is in good state and you are toward success, but if you see that your expenses are more than your regular income, than you need to analyze that which are the points that are dragging our company towards loss and which things need to be addressed so that we can build our company or business to next level.
Different businessman’s check profit and loss statements just to check which rooms of their business need more time and efforts to improve and what new strategies will work at this time to grow their business to next level. P&L is marked as the best tool to check the current financial condition of your business. Profit and loss statements need to be checked at proper intervals like,Monthly,Quarterly,Yearly.
Size, simplicity and complexity of profit and loss statement depends upon the size of your business. If you are running large scale business, then of course your profit and loss statement is quite tricky and complex and needs special skills to create.
Traditionally, there were major two different accounts for P&L that are designed for creation of a Trading account
Profit and loss account.
Purpose Of Profit And Loss Statement:
The basic purpose of a profit and loss statement is just to analyze the net operating income and sales of your business. That if your income is high than you can think to make new strategies and re-invest your income in some new things and decisions to expand your business. And if you find out that your expenses are more than your sales that is clear sign that your business is leading to great loss than you need to make new strategies to uplift your business start earning profit. P&L statement help the owner to make some sound decisions like.
Is your company stable enough to afford new employees?
Is your company stable to expand the area of your office or change location to expand business?
What are your next plans for taxes?
What are your current growth strategies and either they are effective or not?
Preparation Of Profit And Loss Statement:
Following is the brief process of preparation of the profit and loss statement.
Create Ledger Account:
each ledger must need to have account statement from their journal book to monitor the closing balance.
PREPARE TRIAL BALANCE: trial balance will sum up all the ledger accounts. It will highlight the closing balance that was determined by ledger account.
Creation Of Trading And Profit Loss Statement:
complete list of ledger accounts that are involved in sales, purchases, expenses, income, taxes are transferred to the profit and loss statement.
Elements Of Profit And Loss Statement:
Profit and loss statement comprises of various categories that are listed below.
Income:
The income is divided into major divisions. The income of primary divisions is recorded first which include all the revenues of normal daily routine of business. Second division of income include all the miscellaneous of the company, that is the income generated by the investments of the company.
Cost Of Sold Items:
COST OF GOODS SOLD (COGS) included in the profit and loss statement involve all the direct cost or expense like cost of labor, cost of raw materials, or the other cost of manufacturing the goods. All these costs are withdrawing from the business revenue to check margin. If you purchased the product from any other company and now you are selling the product under your company name, then all the expenses include the expense of purchasing product from any other company.
Direct cost separate all the raw expenses like cost of labor, marketing, power bills, internet supplies, training to new employees and insurance.
Operating Expenses:
Operating expenses include all the costs that are used indirectly in the production and running of business. Like the costs used for administrative purposes, employee cost, marketing cost, selling cost, research cost etc.
Operating Profit:
Operating profit is the balance that left from the overall budget after subtracting all the expenses. This profit is also named as EBIT (earning before interest and taxes).
Net Income:
net income is named to the profit that company get after subtracting all the operating and non-operating expenses including taxes and interests. This profit is divided among all the shareholders.
Ways To Analyze Profit And Loss Statement:
If you are running a large scale business than its quite difficult to analyze complete profit and loss statement because this statement will reveal at which level your company is currently running, what are the overall business performance, what are the strength and weaknesses of this business. As well as this profit and loss statement can also be used to compare yourself with other companies running same business to create a benchmark in the industry.
US Small Business Administration suggest to all the businesses of the world to design your daily profit and loss statement because it will help you in growing your business. Following is one of the best method to analyze profit and loss statement.
Analysis Of Profit And Loss Statement:
Year-on-year comparison, means you need to look after all the desperate changes like increase or decrease in sale and income.
Study all the trends running in your business and check the strategies running properly because these annual performances will help you to analyze whether the revenue of your business is growing as compared to expenses or not.
Use your profit and loss statement to help boost the future cash flow.
Checkout all the gross margins like profit or loss.
Checkout the sales of the month which month has increased sales and what are the reasons behind? Any change in marketing that boost up the sale.
What are the overall expenses and what are the expenses points that need to be lowered, How to minimize expenses? What is the biggest expense of business?
Check that the sources from where you are getting income are reliable and continual or not.
Basic Software’s For Creating Profit And Loss Statement:
Its not difficult to find the basic templates on which you will create your profit and loss statement, it is recommended to use accounting software for preparation. If you have detailed revenues and expenses then it’s quite easy to put them up on accounting software and generate your profit and loss statement within no time. Following are some of the popular softwares.
Quickbooks Desktop:
This is one of the best accounting software for small and businesses that are in a growing phase. They offer different plans the most recommended is a three-year plan that you can use and you can also adopt next plan when your business grows up. This software shows its updated version with advanced navigation system and help options are also revised as compared to past. QuickBooks desktop gives unremarkable reporting capability, with slight variation in the profit and loss statement. These reports can be changed according to demand and then export to Microsoft Excel. There three plans are following.
Pro:
The pro plan costs $299.95/year that support three users at same time.
PREMIER: the premier plan costs around $499.95/year that will support five users at same time. This plan supports industry specific reporting.
Enterprice:
the enterprise plan cost around $849.10/year and can easily support almost 30 users at same time. This plan is best and recommended for growing businesses.
Freshbooks:
Freshbook software is basically designed for small businesses that offer a wide list of features that can be used by small businesses to improve their growth and prepare their accurate profit and loss statements. This software has an easy access by mobile app that can be operated in any smartphone easily. Freshbook can also provide a chance that you can collaborate with employees of your business and different accountants. Freshbook provides an extra report to the owner of business so that they can do all management decisions by keeping in mind the current profit and loss status of their business. Freshbook has its own four plans that demand solid reporting capability.
Lite:
lite plan is available in a minimum prices like $15/month that can easily support almost 5 clients.
PLUS: plus, plan is available for around $25/months that can support 50 clients at the same time.
PREMIUM: premium cost around $50/month that can easily support almost 500 clients at same time.
SELECT: select plan is available in custom-prices that can easily support almost 500clients at same time.
Conclusion:
Preparing your profit and loss statement for small and growing businesses is very important as it plays a good role in business growth and development. Many big organizations and high-scale businesses are recommended to prepare their profit and loss statement so that they can check that how much they are earning and how much are their expenses so that they can easily calculate whether they are getting profit or loss from the business. So that they can address the points which lead to the loss of business and get profit from that point as well.
There are different ways and software that can help to prepare profit and loss statements, and it this digital world it become quite easy as well. If the company is getting profit by checking the P&L statement they can make new decisions and re-invest their money in other businesses with new marketing strategies to gain more profit.
FAQs:
How to distinguish between a P&L statement and a balance sheet?
Profit and loss statement is prepared to check that either your business is giving profit or loss.
The balance sheet is an important financial report that highlights what are the business’s assets, liabilities and shareholder’s participation. Then by combining these two sheets you can check the financial situation of your business.
Describe year-to-date profit and loss statement.
Year-to-date P&L statement covers the financial situation of whole year till the checking date or till the time of preparation of statement. These type of statements are required especially at time of filling taxes.
