About the Profit & Loss report
Revenue minus cost of goods sold minus operating expenses for a period, from your ledger, with context lines for inventory purchases and no-restock returns.
Profit & Loss answers "what did I make in this period?": your revenue, less the cost of the goods you sold, less your operating expenses. It reads your ledger, so returns are taken off and every sale counts on the day it shipped.
Where to find it
Open Reports and click Profit & Loss, the first card under General. Like every report with money in it, it needs money access.
Running it: period and channel
- Pick a period from the presets at the top. The report opens on This year. All time covers everything you have recorded. There is no date picker.
- The channel filter narrows it to Manual, the orders you entered, or to one connected shop. It narrows revenue and cost of goods sold only. Operating expenses and purchases belong to the whole business, so they stay. Connecting a sales channel (Shopify, Etsy or Faire) isn't covered in this help center yet. Email support@trackost.com and we'll walk you through it.
- Export CSV and Save as PDF sit after the presets (on a narrower window, on a line of their own below them).
What it shows
A note at the top reads 'These figures count orders whose cost has been recorded. Open orders show an estimate on the Orders page.' When orders placed in the period and channel you picked are still open, Waiting for cost (2) follows the note. It names up to 10 of them, newest first, with no money figures, and each opens its order. Its line reads 'These open orders aren't fully counted in this report yet. An order's cost is recorded when it ships: when you fulfill it in Trackost, or for Shopify, when Shopify marks it fulfilled after you linked the store.' The list goes by order date, because an open order isn't fully in your ledger yet. A sale counts here only once you fulfill it. The top card is the report itself, four lines that end in your net profit.
Under Context, two more lines explain where your money went without changing the net profit. When you bought anything in the period, a table of your purchase spend by category follows.
| Line | What it is |
|---|---|
| Revenue | The price of what you sold, for sales that shipped in the period, less the refunds on returns recorded in the period. |
| Cost of goods sold | The COGS of the sales that shipped in the period, less the cost taken back by returns you restocked. |
| Operating expenses | What you paid in the period for tools and equipment, materials not tracked as inventory, less the credits for tools you returned in the period. |
| Net profit | Revenue − cost of goods sold − operating expenses. The margin under it is net profit divided by revenue. |
| Purchases (inventory) | The value your purchases added to your stock in the period. Opening stock, stock adjustments and vendor credits aren't in it. It is there for context only and is never taken off again. |
| No-restock returns | The cost of the items that came back without restock, shown for reference. It was counted in cost of goods sold when they sold, so it isn't taken off again. |
| Purchase spend by category | The period's purchases of materials, tools included, grouped by the purchase category they were given. |
When the period has no revenue, the margin reads 'Margin —'. A period with no fulfilled sales, no returns, no purchases and no credits for returned tools shows $0.00 on every line. The untouched sample workspace has two open orders and no purchases, so that is what it shows, with both orders under Waiting for cost (2).
How it is calculated
Every line of the report and its Context lines come from your ledger, the record Trackost keeps of every movement of stock and money:
- A sale counts on its ship date, the date you picked when you fulfilled the order, not on its order date.
- A return counts on the day you record it. It takes its refund off revenue. A return you restock also takes its cost off cost of goods sold. A return you don't restock leaves the cost where its sale put it, and No-restock returns shows it for reference.
- A purchase counts on its purchase date.
- A credit for a tool you returned counts on its credit date and comes off operating expenses. So in a period with such a credit and no tool purchase, Operating expenses can be below zero.
Cost of goods sold includes labor, because your batches build labor into the cost of what you make. It doesn't include a recipe's flat overhead, which no batch adds.
Channel and payment fees are not on this report, so its net profit is before fees. Orders Margin and the Profit dashboard show them.
Purchases (inventory) counts purchases only. Opening stock, stock adjustments and vendor credits on materials tracked as inventory change your stock's value but not this line. Schedule C (COGS) counts opening stock in its Beginning inventory and shows the other adjustments and the vendor credits on its Adjustments and Vendor credits lines, and Adjustments Summary lists every adjustment. A credit for a returned tool comes off Operating expenses instead. Stock of a product you buy in, which you add with Adjust and a Cost basis, is an adjustment too, so it isn't in this line. In the picture above, the sample workspace bought $30.00 of fragrance oil and took 3 wicks out with a stocktake. The stocktake isn't a purchase, so Purchases (inventory) and the spend table both read $30.00. Stock you throw away lowers your stock's value, and never your cost of goods sold or net profit.
A return you don't restock is counted once. Its cost stays in Cost of goods sold, where the sale put it, and No-restock returns shows the same amount for reference only. When the sale and the return fall in different periods, the cost is in the period of the sale and No-restock returns in the period of the return. The Profit dashboard counts it the same way, in its COGS and its Write-off column.
Purchase spend by category
The table groups the period's material purchases, tools included, by their purchase category's type: Materials, Other, or Uncategorized for a purchase with none. A new workspace has no purchase categories and nothing in Trackost creates one, so its purchases all read Uncategorized.
This table can differ from Purchases (inventory), and the note under it says so. The table follows the category you gave each purchase; the ledger follows whether each material is tracked as inventory. Tool purchases, for example, sit in operating expenses on the ledger.
How it reconciles with Schedule C
For a past year, Cost of goods sold here is the same figure as the Cost of goods sold line on Schedule C (COGS) for that year, because both are built from the same ledger entries: pick Last year here and the matching year on Schedule C (COGS). For this year they match too, unless something is dated later in the year: Schedule C (COGS) counts up to now, and This year here runs to 31 December. Both count the cost of a return you didn't restock once.
Export
Export CSV downloads profit-and-loss.csv for the period and channel on screen, one line per row: Revenue, COGS, Operating expenses, Net profit, Purchases (inventory), No-restock returns (counted in COGS when sold) and one row per spend category, with amounts such as 1234.50. Save as PDF opens your browser's print window to print or save the report.
Common questions
Why is everything $0.00?
Nothing shipped in the period and nothing was bought. An order you haven't fulfilled isn't a sale yet. Once you fulfill it, it counts on its ship date. Check the period too, because the report opens on This year. The open orders placed in the period are listed under Waiting for cost at the top.
Why doesn't it match the Profit dashboard?
The Profit dashboard covers all time, takes fees off and leaves operating expenses out. Set this report to All time, and its Cost of goods sold matches the dashboard's COGS, a return you didn't restock included. The bottom lines still differ by your fees and operating expenses.
Why doesn't it match Orders Margin?
Orders Margin files an order by its order date and shows it as it was fulfilled, before any return. This report counts a sale on its ship date and takes returns off.
Can I file my taxes from it?
It is a starting point for you and your accountant, not tax advice. Check its figures before they go on a return.