Income statement template in Google Sheets

For small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), creating an income statement can be a time-consuming and costly process. Also referred to as a profit and loss statement (PnL), revenue statement, or operating expenses statement, an income statement helps you measure the performance of your company. On top of that, it can be used to secure financing as well as to calculate and pay taxes.

An income statement is one of the three main financial statements for reporting. It summarizes company revenues and expenses over a specific period of time. It differs from a cash flow statement in that it is based on the accrual of expenses and revenues for accounting purposes rather than for payment. Finally, there is the balance sheet, which summarizes your assets and liabilities.

Essentially, an income statement shows directors and investors whether or not the company made money during that accounting period.

Normally, you have to manually collect and enter data into accounting software to create an income statement. Many small companies send that data to an external accountant … and then wait for the accountant to process it.

Using a ready-made income statement template lets you produce the statement yourself, in-house, from the numbers you already have. Below I’ll walk you through Sheetgo’s free Income statement template for Google Sheets: one spreadsheet you copy to your own Drive, with the statement already built and waiting for your figures.

Why use Google Sheets to create an income statement?

• Flexible: Google Sheets lets you manage and analyze your financial data in the way that suits your business. Whenever you need to change the system you can simply adapt the spreadsheet — without accounting software or IT support.
• Accessible: Because Google Sheets is cloud-based, your accountants or admin staff can open the file and update the figures at any time, from their phone or laptop.
• Compatible with everything: If you use other software packages in your company, you can export from them and bring that data straight into Google Sheets.
• Easy to use: Most people in your company probably already use spreadsheets and Google Sheets is user-friendly for beginners. As a result, the system is easy to maintain and onboarding your team is quick and simple.

How to get started

Sheetgo’s Income statement template is a single Google Sheets file with the statement already built into it. You record income on one tab and expenses on another, and the pre-written formulas fill in a month-by-month income statement along with income and expenses summaries.

It suits companies of any size. Whoever handles invoices and payments records them on the input tabs, and the accountant or company director reads the finished statement on the Income Statement Monthly tab. There is nothing to set up and no account to create: you copy the file to your own Google Drive and it is yours to keep.

What kind of template is this?

It is one Google Sheets file. The inputs, the formulas and the finished statement all live in the same spreadsheet, on separate tabs. Copy it once and you have your own private version, pre-filled with sample data you can overwrite with your own numbers.

Two tabs are for typing into — Income Input and Expenses Input. Everything else is calculated from what you enter there, so you never have to write a formula yourself.

Working in a single spreadsheet gives you:

• One version of the truth: income, expenses and the statement itself sit in the same file, so there is nothing to reconcile between spreadsheets and no doubt about which copy is current.
• Scalability: you can build on the file as your company grows — add categories, extra columns, or a copy for next year — without redesigning it or moving to different software.
• Integration: Google Sheets works well alongside other software, so accountants and managers can bring in figures from other tools and paste them into the input tabs.

What you get with this template:

Copying the Income statement template saves one Google Sheets file to your Google Drive. Inside it you will find:

• Read me — a short guide to the file and the order to fill it in.
• Inputs — where you set the year to report on, and the accrual periods used to spread a cost over more than one year.
• Income Input — one row per invoice received: date, client, invoice number, amount, accrual dates, income category, product and department.
• Expenses Input — one row per invoice paid: date, supplier, invoice number, amount, accrual dates, type of expense, expenditure category and department.
• Income Statement Monthly — the finished statement, month by month and for the full year: net operating income, gross margin, total expenses, EBITDA, earnings before interest and tax, and net earnings.
• Income Summary per Month and Expenses Summary per Month — the figures behind the statement, broken down by category.
• Income Accrual Mapping — shows how each income entry is spread across the months, based on the accrual period you picked for it.
• Automate this — what to do when you would rather not keep the file up to date by hand.

How to get the income statement template

Click the blue button below, then click Make a copy to save your own version to Google Drive.

How to use the income statement template

Step 1: Set the year and the accrual periods

Open the Inputs tab. Enter the year you want to report on next to Year to report on. Every other tab keys off this figure, so it is the first thing to fill in.

Underneath it is the Accrual periods table, which is how you spread a cost over more than one year. Immediate divides the amount by 1, so the whole sum lands in the month it was paid; 5 years divides it by 5. You pick which one applies to each line in the Accrual period column of the Expenses Input tab. Edit these rows, or add your own, if your business spreads costs over different periods.

Step 2: Log the money coming in

Go to the Income Input tab and record every invoice the company issues, one per row: the input date, client name, invoice number, the amount received, the accrual starting date and period, the income category, and — if it is useful to you — the product and department it belongs to.

The tab arrives with sample rows so you can see the shape of the data. Delete them or type over them with your own.

The grey Current Year Income ($) column at the end is calculated for you: it is the share of each amount that falls inside the year you set on the Inputs tab. Leave that column alone.

Because this is a normal Google Sheets file, you can hand it to the colleague who processes invoices with the green Share button and give them edit access.

If you would rather they did not work in the file itself, attach a Google Form to it. The form gives you data validation on the way in and drops every submission into its own tab in the same spreadsheet.

As soon as there are rows on the Income Input tab, the Income Summary per Month and Income Accrual Mapping tabs fill in. Both are built from formulas, so treat them as read-only — type over a formula and the numbers stop adding up.

Step 3: Log the money going out

The Expenses Input tab works the same way for money leaving the company. Record each invoice you pay: the input date, supplier, invoice number, amount, accrual start date and period, the type of expense, the expenditure category and the department.

The Type of expense column is the one that decides where a cost lands in the statement. Its options are the same labels you see down the left of the finished statement — COGS, R&D, CAPEX, income tax, finance costs, refunds and returns — so it pays to be consistent about which one you pick.

Here too, the grey Current Year Expense ($) column is worked out for you from the accrual period you chose, and the Expenses Summary per Month tab totals everything by category.

You can share the file with whoever handles payments in exactly the same way. Because it is one spreadsheet, the person entering income and the person entering expenses can work in it at the same time.

Step 4: Read your income statement

Open the Income Statement Monthly tab. This is the output: a column for each month of the year you set, a Total Year column on the right, and the standard statement lines down the left — net operating income, gross margin, total expenses, EBITDA, earnings before interest and tax, earnings before tax, and net earnings.

There is nothing to do to this tab. It recalculates as you and your colleagues add rows to the two input tabs. There is also a placeholder in the top-left corner where you can drop your own logo before you send the statement to a director, a bank, or your accountant.

Build your income statement in Google Sheets

That is the whole process: set the year, log the income, log the expenses, read the statement. No accounting software to buy, no waiting on an external accountant, and no month-end guesswork about where a number came from.

The one thing a spreadsheet cannot do is fill itself in. Someone still has to key in the invoices and chase the ones that are missing. If that is the part you would rather hand over, the Automate this tab in the file introduces Owen, Sheetgo’s finance virtual employee, who takes on the invoice and reconciliation work for you.

Frequently asked questions