Profit and loss statement template

A profit and loss statement and an income statement are the same report, under two different names. The free Sheetgo template in this article is published as the Income statement template, so that is the name you’ll see when you open the file. What it produces is your P&L.

A profit and loss statement is one of the three financial statements most businesses have to produce regularly. It gives you a clear picture of your revenue, costs, and expenses over a set period. You need it to know where your business stands, and lenders, investors, and tax authorities often ask for one too. Pulling all that financial data together by hand takes time. Hire an external accountant and it costs money; do it in-house by copying and pasting between spreadsheets and you invite mistakes. The Sheetgo income statement template gives you a third option: one Google Sheets file where you log what comes in and what goes out, and the statement is worked out for you.

Most businesses already keep their financial information in Google Sheets, and for good reason. It’s cloud-based, so your team can reach it from anywhere, and several people can enter the latest figures without emailing versions back and forth. The Sheetgo income statement template is built on Google Sheets for those same reasons.

Is a profit and loss statement the same as an income statement?

Yes. Profit and loss statement, P&L, and income statement all describe the same report: revenue in, costs out, and the profit or loss left over for the period. Which of the three names you see depends on the country and on the habit of the finance team writing it.

That’s why the template you copy below is called the Income statement template. Everything it gives you is your profit and loss statement.

Why use the Sheetgo profit and loss statement template?

The Sheetgo income statement template is a single Google Sheets file that turns the income and expenses you log into a month-by-month profit and loss statement. You copy it to your own Google Drive, clear the sample data, and start entering your own figures. There’s nothing to connect and no account to create.

Here are a few more reasons to keep your profit and loss statement in a spreadsheet-based template:

• Flexible: No matter what kind of business you run, Google Sheets allows you to build a tailor-made system. You can adapt it as needs change, without any new software.
• Accessible: You and your coworkers can access, share, and work with all of your financial data from any corner of the world. All you need is an internet connection.
• Compatible with everything: Google Sheets sits comfortably alongside the rest of your finance stack. You can download the file as Excel, CSV, or PDF whenever your accountant, your bank, or your board asks for a particular format.
• Easy to use: There’s no need to onboard your team as they’ll already be working with spreadsheets on a daily basis. Maintenance is easy and there’s no need for IT support.

Here is what’s inside the file, and how to get your first statement out of it.

How to use the profit and loss statement template

The Sheetgo income statement template is one Google Sheets file. You copy it into your own Google Drive, and everything happens inside that single file.

Alongside a Read me tab that explains how the file fits together, you get:

• Inputs: the year you want to report on, plus a small table that sets how an amount is spread over time.
• Income Input: log the money your business receives.
• Expenses Input: log what your business spends.
• Income Statement Monthly: your profit and loss statement, month by month, worked out from the two input tabs.
• Income Summary per Month and Expenses Summary per Month: each side of the statement broken down on its own.
• Income Accrual Mapping: shows how each income entry is spread across periods, following the table in Inputs.

The formulas do the arithmetic, so the statement and the summary tabs move as soon as you add a row.

Step 1: Make your own copy of the template

Click the button below. Google will ask you to save a copy of the file to your own Google Drive, and that copy is yours to edit.

Step 2: Set the year you want to report on

Open the Inputs tab and enter the year you want to report on. Underneath it, the accrual periods table controls how an amount is spread over time: leave a period on Immediate to count the full amount straight away, or set it to 5 years to divide it across five.

Step 3: Enter your income

Go to the Income Input tab, delete the sample rows, and log the money your business receives. Each row is one entry, so you can keep adding as the year goes on.

From those entries the template fills in the Income Summary per Month and Income Accrual Mapping tabs. You don’t type anything into either one; the figures there come from what you logged in Income Input.

Step 4: Enter your expenses

Do the same on the Expenses Input tab: clear the sample rows and log what your business spends, one row per item.

The Expenses Summary per Month tab then lays your monthly spending out side by side, calculated from those rows.

Step 5: Read your profit and loss statement

The Income Statement Monthly tab is the report itself. It draws on both input tabs, works out the totals and subtotals for each section, and lays out your profit and loss for every month of the year you set in Inputs.

How do I make a P&L statement?

Log what comes in, log what goes out, and let the formulas handle the rest. The Sheetgo income statement template gives you a profit and loss statement that keeps up with the figures you enter, in a Google Sheets file you own and can shape around the way your business reports.

With your costs in one place, you can also run a cost-volume-profit analysis to see how many units you need to sell to break even.

Frequently asked questions