QuickBooks Online 2021 comparative profit and loss, p&l or income statement, let’s get into it with Intuit QuickBooks Online 2021. Here we are in our free QuickBooks Online test drive file, which you can find by searching in your favorite browser for QuickBooks Online test drive. When Craig’s design and landscaping services, we’re going to go down to the reports on the left hand side and take a look at a comparative profit and loss. We’re going to construct one from a standard Profit and Loss report.
00:32
However, before we do so if we scroll down to the business overview section, we see that we do have a profit and loss comparison here, which is basically taking the standard profit loss Report, I’m going to open that up. And then using some of the tools that we will use here. So we have this comparative Profit and Loss report. And what they’re doing is using this tool in order to construct that report, and then just provide it to us as kind of a default report. But if we know how to build these comparative reports, we have a lot more flexibility.
01:01
And we can do more than just a year by year comparison. Let’s go ahead and duplicate that tab, I’m going to right click on this tab, duplicate fat tab, I’m going to duplicate it again. So I’m going to right click on this tab again, and duplicate it one more time. So then we’re going to be working in this middle tab, this is going to be the one where I’m going to create the new Profit and Loss report.
01:25
This is the one we’ll where we will have the comparative Profit and Loss reports. Let’s go ahead and close the hamburger up top gonna change the date ranges for 2020. So I’m gonna make this a 101 to zero to 1231 to zero and go ahead and run that report. And then we’ll go to the prior tab. This is where we will run the current Profit and Loss report. So let’s go down to the reports down below. And we’re going to be opening up just a standard profit loss this time just a normal one profit loss PnL income statement, changing the dates up top from a 101 to zero to 1231 to zero, we’re going to run that report, this is going to be a similar process that we had with the balance sheet.
02:05
Now to do this comparison reports, I’m going to close up the hamburger up top. Now notice this this range here now means something it’s going from January to December. Whereas on a balance sheet report even though we have a range, it’s really as of a point in time. So this information down below is showing what has happened over time. So one way we can do the comparative reports is for example, to hit this total item and then say I want to see it in terms of months. And then we can run that report.
02:36
And that’ll break down a month by month comparison. If we just want to two months of data, then of course I can change the date up top to 1101 to zero 11 1101 to zero. That’s right, I did it right. And then we got our two month kind of comparison, notice this is different than on the balance sheet, because now you have a two month comparison, and then they total them up, which is nice, because it’s telling you what the balance was at the end of two months.
03:03
That’s one thing that you would think of to commonly do on an income statement report where you have multiple periods as opposed to a report on the balance sheet where that wouldn’t make any sense, because the two columns represent a point in time. So this total column does not appear if you run the same report as we did so in the balance sheet report. Now the other thing we might want to see is like we did with the balance sheet, a subtraction between the two, instead of adding the two, I might want to compare and contrast them.
03:31
So this would be saying this is the November December, here’s how we did in a two month time period. So let’s try it the other way, I’m going to say let’s bring this back to the total here. And to bring this back to total. And then we’re going to be changing it this way he did this report, I wanted to take a look at the previous period. Now I have the custom period down below.
03:52
And it’s showing nine one to 1031. So what I want to do is change the dates up top here. So I’m going to change the dates up top. Before I do that, I’m going to change this to let’s make it 1201 20. So just the month of December. So 12, one to 1231 2020 running that report. So there we have it. And then I still have that comparison. Now, if I hit the drop down, we’re going to be comparing the previous period, which is 11, one to 1130. Now note this is a little bit, we have to be kind of careful with the ranges once again, because because I have a range up top.
04:31
And this has 31 days, you know, it might default sometimes to just pick up 31 days or try to match the 31 days. In this case, the other month, of course has 30 days. So the fact that you have a custom range can kind of help you to make sure that you’re matching up what you want to be matching up the exact number of days or more typically the actual full month. Let’s look at that first. And so if we run that report, let’s go ahead and run that again. So there’s going to be our side by side comparison of this time.
04:59
We The current month upfront, which is typical, or very common when you present reports, because that is presenting, not from the beginning of the story, but from the most relevant data. So we’re going from the most relevant data back in time to the lesser of relevancy in the data. So now let’s do the next thing, which of course would be instead of adding them up, let’s subtract them out. So we’re comparing two periods, let’s subtract them out now. So I want to see the change, we want to change the difference. And so there we have it. So now we’re just subtracting the two.
05:30
Now, these are performance reports, remember, so we’re saying, Hey, this is the income. This is how we did for the month of December. This is how we did in terms of revenue generation for the month of November, and the change between the two, as opposed to a balance sheet report for state like cash, which is saying this is how much cash we had, where we stand at a certain point in time, not how much cash we got, how much cash we had, versus how much cash we had at a different period of time, it’s a bit different, different comparison.
05:57
Now we want the percentage change as well, percentage change. And we’ll run that but this is kind of like a horizontal type of analysis, you might hear it to be cold, let’s see how we’re going to calculate that. This is a very important calculation for measuring anything. So the normal calculation is going to go I’m taking the current period one to seven, five minus the prior period 975, that’s going to give us the difference of 300. Divide that by the prior period, the starting point 975. And that’s going to give us if we move the decimal over two places 30.77 about.
06:34
So that’s how the percentage is going to come about. And that’s going to be our percentage change, which makes a lot of sense with a with a report like this, because this is a performance report. So it’s similar to trying to measure performance of a work performance or like an athlete or something like that baseball, what’s something you’re trying to see how they are doing. And so we’re trying to see what the change was. And we might be able to compare $1 change here to prior periods. However, sometimes the dollar change does not, you know, apply.
07:04
So if we’re trying to measure our growth rates, compared to another company, probably a bigger one that we’re trying to benchmark to or copy or imitate in some way to increase our growth, then we can’t really compare the dollar amount, but we might be able to say, hey, look, we’re growing at this, this rate, that’s, that’s mirroring that rate that they have as well, right. And if you have job performance things, it’s the same type of thing. When you’re looking at performance, you look at someone’s how many hits they had, if you see the change or the growth in their hits, versus somebody else, you might be able to compare that but then you got to say,
07:37
Well, how many ad bats did they have and whatnot, you know, you gotta you got to look at more, and you’re gonna have to end up you end up using, of course ratios, to try to come up with some type of performance measure that gives you some type of data, this is kind of an intro into this is the basics or the basis on which ratio analysis will kind of be the built. So in any case, then we’ll do some changes up top, I’m going to change the profit and loss to a comparative profit loss, we can remove the date right there, because we’ve got the dates then down below.
08:06
So this date isn’t really correct, because now we have December and November, not just December. So let’s do it. Let’s do that we’ll do our customized changes up top. And I’m going to say I want to remove the pennies because I don’t like the pennies or just I don’t need them. They’re not helping my decision making process. I’m going to put the brackets around it make the bracketed numbers read as well take a look at the headers and footers. Let’s make it let’s make it an income statement. This time just to change something up, let’s make it a comparative income statement.
08:42
We’re making a statement about our income. And then I’m going to copy that because I’m going to put that in my memorized report too. And then I’m going to get rid of the date prepared time prepared report basis. And I’m also going to remove the report period right there, get rid of that don’t want that either. Let’s go ahead and run it, then let’s run it, see what happens to it. So we’ve got it, we got the comparative income statement. And then we’ve had December, and then the prior period, note that something kind of changed with the prior period. Let me take a look at my custom period over here. I want to make a custom range.
09:18
So I want it to be just November. Let’s try that again. Let’s go ahead and run that again. So there it is December and November. And then we’ve got no pennies, we’ve got the change, then the red to stand out for the negative numbers, which is nice. That looks good, and there’s no footer down below. So that looks pretty good. That looks pretty good. Let’s go ahead and then let’s save this thing. So I would then save it as our memorized report. Right? We’d go over here and say I want to memorize this thing, because this thing is nice. So comparative income statement and I’m not going to make a group but you would typically save it here.
09:56
Obviously it’s not going to save for too long in our practice problem right now as we go Go back in and out of practice file. But that’s what I would typically do in practice. Now let’s go ahead and export this thing as a PDF file, save it to our Excel worksheet, and then add it to like all of our other reports that we’ve been putting together thus far. So I’m gonna hit the drop down up top, we’re going to export it to a PDF file, let’s go ahead and save it as a PDF. So we’ll save it as a PDF, it’s going to populate down there. So I want to use my dragging and dropping, drag and drop feature.
10:33
So I’m going to minimize this, I’m going to pull up our other window, and that’s where I want it to go, that’s where it’s gonna go, you know, open this up, and then we get to do the old drag and drop, grabbing it left clicking on it, dragging it, and then dropping it gotta drop it sometime can’t drag forever, you got to drop it. So then we’re gonna say rename, I’m going to call this 21 231. It’s going to be a comparative income statement. So that looks good. And then we’ll save it to our Excel worksheet here as well. So I’m going to save it to this Excel worksheet, our goal to create a new tab over here, put our new comparative income statement in it, and then print this all out at one PDF file.
11:19
So that’s our objective, let’s do it, we’re going to close this out, we’re going to then export it exporting again, this time to an Excel worksheet, which will populate down here because we’re in Google Chrome. And that’s where Google Chrome, like does stuff like that it populates down there. If you have some other one, it’ll be up in the right, such as Firefox or Explorer. And so there it is, I’m going to enable the editing, because that lets me edit it. And then if I right click on this thing and try to move or copy, see the other ones still not there right now.
11:52
So I’m just going to copy the whole sheet, I’m going to put my cursor on the triangle up top and take the whole sheet, right click on that sheet and copy the entire thing, we’re going to go on back to our other report, this is where we wanted to put it You’ll recall that was our objective, I’m going to hit the plus button, there’s a new sheet, and we’ll put this in a one, it’s got to be in a one or you have to highlight like the whole sheet with the triangle, and then right click and paste it. So there’s our comparative income statement, I’m going to double click on our tab down below, double click on this kind of call it comparative income statement like that.
12:27
And then let’s see if it fits on one page by going to the Page Layout View. See if it’s fitting on one page, I just want to make sure it fits one page wide, which it does. So I’m okay with that. It’s a couple pages long. That’s okay for me, we could get into more formatting here like on the header and stuff. But that gets into Excel stuff. We might talk more about that later. But just want to show you then of course that we can then save this into our PDF file with it all on one PDF file with the help and use of the cute PDF printer or some kind of PDF printer.
12:59
You don’t have to use that one, not trying to promote it or anything. It’s a free thing, I’m pretty sure. But in any case, we have a cute PDF printer. And then we want to see the entire workbook entire workbook where we have 11 pages at this point. So we got like balance sheet reports up top balance sheet reports, balance sheet report. Balance cotton, there it is there’s our comprehensive income statement. Perfect, it looks perfect. So I’m going to print it, we will print it. And then it’s going to ask me where do we want to put it pretty soon. There it is. And then I’m just going to overwrite this financial statement Report, I’m going to overwrite that, like so. And then close this out. And I’m going to save it.
13:43
And then I’m going to minimize this and then I’m going to double click this is where we saved it. So now we can attach this with one attachment if we so choose if we want to do it that way. So we got our balance sheet, we’ve got another type of balance sheet to compare to balance sheet. We’ve got another, you know, balance sheet vertical analysis or something. And then we’ve got our summary balance sheet which probably should go on top really. And then we’ve got our income statement. I’m not really organizing these just showing you we can put them all on one sheet here at this point. And there’s our comparative income statement. So there it is.