 QuickBooks Desktop 2023 Comparative Profit and Laws P&L Income Statement Let's do it! We're then to it! QuickBooks Desktop 2023 Support Accounting Instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. This course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Here we are in QuickBooks Desktop Sample Raw Castle Construction Practice File Provided by QuickBooks Going through the setup process we do every time maximizing the home page to the grey area view drop down, checked off the hide icon bar and the open windows list open windows on the left hand side reports drop down company and financial looking at that profit and loss P&L Income Statement with the range change. 010124 to 123124 January to December Customize it, fonts and numbers change the font up to 12 ok yes please ok then we'll go to the reports again company and financial this time the big balance sheet going to change the date this time with a drop down fiscal year 123124 Customize it with the fonts and numbers so we can change the font up to 12 again ok yes ok so we're doing that quickly because we do it every time so last time we've been focusing in on the profit and loss let's go back to the P&L we went over the report in general now we want to take a look at some comparative reports noting that we're not going to go through all of the kind of customization tools again because we saw them as we took a look at the balance sheet but we do want to look at some comparative reports for the profit and loss because for number one they'll be a little bit different we'll use the same tools as we use for the balance sheet to create comparative reports but because of the nature of the profit and loss being a time range as opposed to a point in time the reports will have a little bit different of a look and feel if you're using any other reports and using a similar kind of comparison then you want to keep that in mind are you looking at a report that is showing you in other words the time frame what has happened from point A to point B the distance you have gone over a certain time is that what the report is showing or is the report showing where you stand as of a certain point in time where it would be more like a balance sheet type of report also noting that when you're thinking about any other kind of report you're typically thinking to one that will give you detail more added detail about one line item or multiple line items on one of these main two reports balance sheet or income statement so if you're looking at a report related to the balance sheet it might be more likely that you're looking at a report that's a point in time report if it's an expansion of a line item on the balance sheet or it might give you some detail some timing detail about where you stand at that end point on the balance sheet ok in any case we're going to go to this compromise up top and there's a couple ways that we can do these comparative reports just like we saw with the balance sheet one is that we can change the range and then we can change the items within it so I might change the range say for let's say we're going to do October and November comparison so I might say the range is going to go from 10.01 to 4 the beginning of October to let's say November 11.32.4 if I leave it at that it will give me this time an income statement for that time frame let's just compare that to the balance sheet just so we can see that if I put that same range up top from here that was going to go from from what was it 10.01 to 4 to 11.32.4 and I checked that out notice I really I'm not going to have any change from that date range you can see here the 55.85 as if I change this to let's say 11.01 to or even 11.32.4 right because this is as of a point in time whereas this if I run that report I show something different here keep in mind that 129 then as if I showed this as of let's say 11.01 right so it's not just dependent on the end date so we're going to go from 10.01 that's going to show us the activity what we have done for that two month time frame but then I could say okay let's hit the drop down for the totals and do that on a month by month basis now it's going to give me the first month first right October then December then it gives me a total so it reads from left to right remember when we did that with the balance sheet if I did that with the balance sheet and I went from 10.01 to 4 and then I went from month to month and said okay it doesn't give me a total because that's as of a point in time going to the profit loss it's going to give me October November and then the total here so that's kind of nice then we could do that same thing for a quarter so let's say we're doing the last couple quarters so let's say we're going from we're going from let's say 70701 24 to 1231 24 let's bring that back to the year let's say that's going to be for a year or let's bring this to the totals totals that'll show me how we did for the last part of the year this last six months if I want to break it out by quarter now I can say let's hit the drop down for the totals and make it quarters so now I've got the third and fourth quarter broken out here we could do the quarters for the whole year I could go from 0101 010124 so now we've got four quarters so we're not restricted to just two timeframes and this kind of method we could do months for the whole year if we chose to do that as well we have a whole lot of options which once again you can imagine at the end of the month or the end of the year you might have a whole bunch of different reports that you can imagine putting together as you provide that monthly data possibly to your client so let's do it a different way now let's go back on over let's bring it back to where we were from 010124 to 123124 and then bring it to the total back to our starting point there's our starting point now if we're just comparing two periods it's often nice to use this other method which would be that we're going to say let's take a month if I want to compare October and November but I also want to see the change and the percentage change so I have to do it a bit different way I'm going to look at the just November 110124 and then compare it to the previous period using this icon down below previous period so now if I say ok we've got November October note here in this method we can really only compare two periods instead of being able to compare the whole year it doesn't give us the total column because in this method often times we're contrasting the two not adding the two together so notice that other reports quite useful on the income statement because you can add the two this report quite useful because now we can subtract the two so the next thing that we would look at typically is to go let's customize it and say change in the numbers so now we've got the current month also notice the current month first the prior month and then the difference notice what we're looking at here with the profit and loss or income statement is the performance so for example this number is how how much we earned for the month of November for the first to the 30th this is how much we earned for that full 30 days in October and that's the difference within our performance over October and November we earned the sum of those two over the 60 days but we're comparing performance the distance we went in other words or in a way of November 30 day period and October 30 day period we could also look at the percentage change customizing up top and looking at the percent change okay if we pull out the trustee calculator just to get a handle on what that means this could be called a horizontal type of analysis with the percentages we can say okay we're at 67550.5 minus October 6165.25 that gives us a change and then I can divide that by the prior month which is 6165 1.25 moving the decimal two places over about 6.6% that percentage remember is going to be useful because that is something that we can benchmark say to other companies I can't really show if I had this increase in my overall income for this category I can't really compare that dollar amount to a company I'm trying to benchmark or copy or imitate because the company I'm trying to imitate probably makes more money than we do so we can we can try to use percentages and say okay did this other did this other company have a percentage increase that's similar to ours are we in alignment with the market industry and so on is it true that this for whatever reason the subcontractor labor went up similarly versus these these items going down for a similar kind of business so those are the kind of questions that we can ask we have to have performance numbers for comparative purposes in percentages often times just like we need in job performance calculations just like if we're comparing the jobs of athletes we have to use percentages to see who's the best hitter who's the best runner or whatever okay so there is that now then so we can see the whole report here we might do some customization to it now in terms of in terms of the title because now the title has for example November maybe that's not really appropriate because now we have November and October we might want to call it a comparative report of some kind we might also want to change it to an income statement instead of a profit and loss if we're going to provide it to an external user remembering that the formatting often times is is a big part of our job and if we can distinguish ourselves from other bookkeepers then that can often be useful so we might want to make it a little bit different in terms of calling it an income statement we might want to take the pennies off down here we might want to make the negative numbers bracketed so those are the things that we'll do now we might want to remove this we might want to put a footer on it let's do that we're going to customize we're going to say let's go to the filters let's go to the headers and footers and let's say I don't want this subtitle at all I'd like to remove that I'm going to say it's good I'm just calling it an income statement income statement statement and so and let's say it's a comparative income statement so let's call it a comparative income statement come hold on a second hold on a second comparative income statement so and then I'm going to get rid of the date time and report basis these three items I'm going to put my name in the footer and then we're going to go to the fonts and numbers and let's say we changed it to 12 already on the size then I'm going to put parentheses around the brackets parentheses I'm going to make them red if they're negative numbers and then we'll take away the pennies without the pennies and that can clean it up a little bit for external reporting they can kind of really show that the negatives versus the positive changes are much more dramatically in that format as well so there we have that now remember you might do other kind of comparative reports here so you could compare a month a month you might compare quarter to quarter so if I wanted to compare quarter to quarter like the third quarter and the fourth quarter I would type in the fourth quarter which would be the last three months of 10 0124 to 1231 24 and then we could say previous period which should give us then October through December and July through September so July through September compared to October through December and we've got the comparisons there we could do it for a year of course so I could go over here and say I want to be comparing one year which is going to be 010124 010124 to 1231 to that year versus 2023 the previous period okay so now we've got January through December versus 2024 versus 2023 and the change on down below as well for that one so we also could compare one more time one other comparison you can consider one other type as you might say well I want to compare the current month of the current year to the month the same month of the prior year so I could come back on over and say okay let's go back to 1231 to 4 let's go from 010124 to 12 no wait a second wait a second 1201 24 to 1231 24 December of 2024 is what I'm looking for I'm going to uncheck these and then compare it to the previous year so when I compare it to the previous year I'm not I'm going to be comparing it to to the same period in the previous year in this case the month of December so I'm going to say okay so now I've got December of 24 versus December of 23 so you can imagine then a lot of different income statement reports that you can start to compile periodically providing to your clients as you give them your information possibly monthly or yearly and we combine that to the balance sheet reports we get a whole bunch of reports you got to think about which kind of reports you want to provide people monthly at the end of the quarter at the end of the year you could have an income statement you could have a summer like a smaller income statement a summary income statement you could then have a comparative report comparing this month to the prior month and the difference between the two you could have this month compared to the prior month and the total of all of them you could have the year to date by month or the year to date by quarter you can compare the current month to the prior month in the prior year in the same month in the prior year you can compare the current quarter to the prior quarter in the prior year this could go almost endlessly when you think about all the comparisons you can do with comparative reports let's go back to the month by month comparison which was from we said it was from let's say we did 11.01.24 to 11.30.24 and let's bring it back to the previous period so this is the month of November which we're going to compare to the prior month which would be that of October so now we've got November versus October and this is the general kind of concept of the report so that's the comparative type reports I think I misspelled comparative I apologize but that's the general idea