Understanding your P&L report in CashSheet
What the P&L tells you
The Profit & Loss (Income Statement) shows your Revenue, Cost of Goods Sold, Gross Profit, Operating Expenses, and Net Profit for a period. In CashSheet it updates in real time — every sale, every purchase, every expense posts immediately.
Revenue
This is the total of all sales posted to your earnings accounts. In CashSheet, every Quick Sale credits your Sales Revenue account automatically. Discounts are posted as contra-revenue, so the Revenue line shows your net earned amount.
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
COGS represents the direct cost of the items you sold. For restaurants and retailers using CashSheet's Inventory module, COGS is posted automatically when a sale is made — based on your recipe costs and ingredient average costs.
If COGS is showing $0, it usually means one of three things: your items have no recipes defined, your ingredients have no average cost set, or the inventory bridge task has not run yet.
Gross Profit and Gross Margin
Gross Profit = Revenue − COGS. Gross Margin % = (Gross Profit ÷ Revenue) × 100. For a restaurant, a healthy gross margin is typically 65-75%. If yours is lower, review your recipe costs and menu prices.
A $12.99 sandwich with $3.62 in ingredient costs gives a gross margin of 72%. Sell 100 per day and your daily gross profit is $937.
Operating Expenses
These are the costs of running your business that are not directly tied to production: rent, utilities, payroll, marketing. Record these as Bills or Expenses in CashSheet and they flow into your P&L automatically.
How to use your P&L
Pull your P&L weekly. Compare this week to last week and to the same week last year. If Revenue is up but Gross Profit is flat, your food costs are rising. If Operating Expenses are growing faster than Revenue, you have a cost control problem. The P&L does not lie — but only if your data is complete and current.