The Profit and Loss provides a structured monthly view of financial performance, giving businesses critical insight into profitability trends, expenditure patterns and overall financial health. Each record covers a single month and includes the headline totals (income, cost of goods sold, gross profit, operating expenses, other income and net profit) along with a breakdown of the individual accounts that make up the report.
This data area is available on both accounting bases. The AccountingMethod property tells you which basis a record uses: Accrual (income and expenses recognised when invoiced) or Cash (income and expenses recognised only when money is received or paid). Always read AccountingMethod from the record rather than assuming a basis, and use it to write alerts that recognise period-on-period trends, account variances and threshold breaches.
The AI will only look back at 12 months' worth of data.
Key Properties:
SourceLink: A report-level link identifying this monthly Profit and Loss report. Use it as the detection key for report-level findings.
ReportDate: The month this Profit and Loss report covers. Use it for all time-based filtering (months, quarters, financial years) and for matching the same account across months.
BaseCurrency: The ISO currency code of all monetary figures on this report and its accounts (e.g. "AUD").
AccountingMethod: The accounting basis for this record, either "Accrual" or "Cash". Read this value rather than assuming a basis.
TotalIncome: The total income or revenue (also referred to as sales or turnover) generated by the business for the month.
CostOfGoodsSold: The total cost of goods sold (COGS) incurred in producing goods sold by the business during the month.
GrossProfit: The profit for the month after deducting the cost of goods sold from total income.
TotalOperatingExpenses: The total expenses incurred in running the business operations for the month. This figure already includes individual expense lines such as wages and superannuation, so do not double count them.
TotalOtherIncome: Income from sources other than the main business operations for the month.
NetProfit: The profit for the month after all expenses, including operating expenses and cost of goods sold, are deducted from total income.
ProfitAndLossAccounts: The list of individual accounts that make up the Profit and Loss report. Each account carries:
ProfitAndLossAccount
AccountName: The name of the account in the report (e.g. "Wages and Salaries"). Match against this for named accounts such as wages, super or suspense.
AccountCode: The numeric or alphanumeric code that identifies the account (e.g. "502").
StandardClassificationName: The classification of the account, either "Income" or "Expense". Finer categories such as COGS, wages or GST must be identified from the account name or code.
Amount: The amount for this account in the month (e.g. "$5,000").
VarianceAmount: The dollar amount of the difference between the account's current-month figure and its comparison base (e.g. "$2,000").
VariancePercent: The percentage variance of this account's current-month amount versus the higher of its prior-month amount or its 12-month average. Can be negative for a decrease (e.g. "5%").
BaseCurrency: The ISO currency code of the account's monetary figures (e.g. "AUD").
SourceLink: A per-account link. Use this as the detection key for per-account findings.
The Profit and Loss object simplifies financial performance analysis, offering insight into profit margins, expense tracking and account variances to support effective financial planning and decision-making.
📝 Example Alerts
Alert me when an expense account varies by more than 10% from the prior month, excluding the current month
Alert me when an account with "suspense" in its name has a balance greater than $0 in any prior month
Alert me when wages are greater than 30% of sales or revenue for any given month
Alert me when net profit exceeds $100,000 for any given month
Let me know when total income drops by 30% compared with the prior month