Profit and loss report in AccBooks AI

What the P&L shows

The Profit & Loss (P&L) report — also called the Income Statement — shows your business’s revenue, costs and profit over a period of time. Unlike the Balance Sheet (which shows a point in time), the P&L covers a date range.

A standard P&L structure:

Revenue (turnover)
− Cost of goods sold (COGS)
= Gross profit
− Operating expenses (overheads)
= Operating profit (EBIT)
± Finance income/costs
= Profit before tax
− Corporation tax
= Net profit (profit for the period)

Generating the P&L

1. Go to Reports → Profit & Loss.
2. Select the date range — current month, quarter, year-to-date, or custom.
3. Choose the format:
   • Summary — top-level categories only.
   • Detailed — individual nominal codes.
   • Management accounts — formatted for internal reporting with variance analysis.
4. Click Generate report.

Period comparison

Use the Compare to option to add a comparison column:

• Same period last year
• Previous period
• Budget (if you’ve set up a budget in AccBooks)

Comparison reports show variance in both absolute (£) and percentage terms. Red figures indicate unfavourable variances.

Drilling down to transactions

Click any figure on the P&L to see the underlying transactions. For example, clicking the Rent figure shows every transaction posted to the Rent nominal code in the period. From this view you can click individual transactions to open them in the ledger.

Filtering the P&L

Use the filter panel to narrow the report:

• Department — if you’ve tagged transactions by department.
• Project — if you use project tracking.
• Tag — custom tags applied to transactions.

This lets you produce a P&L for a specific product line, project or business unit within AccBooks.

Customising columns

In the management accounts format, drag columns to reorder them. Add:

• Budget column — shows budgeted vs actual.
• % of revenue — shows every line as a percentage of total revenue (common for margin analysis).

Exporting the P&L

Click Export to download:

• PDF — formatted for client presentation, with your company logo.
• Excel (XLSX) — raw data with formulas, ready for further analysis.
• CSV — plain text for import into other systems.

Statutory P&L format

For year-end statutory accounts (Companies House filing), the P&L format follows FRS 102 Section 1A or FRS 105 depending on your company size. Go to Reports → Statutory accounts → P&L for the statutory-format version with XBRL tagging.

Accruals and prepayments

The P&L automatically includes accruals and prepayments if you’ve posted them as journals. Go to Journals → Accruals to manage recurring accrual entries.