Find the missing income and expense transactions in your Profit and Loss report

Find out why your Profit and Loss report is missing income and expense transactions in QuickBooks Online.

In a nutshell, financial reports show how your overall business is doing financially. Meanwhile, a Profit and Loss report is a type of financial statement that shows your business’ revenue and expenses (such as sales, rent, and labour) for a particular period.

If you don’t see your income and expenses in your Profit and Loss report, here are a few things you can check.

Check your accounting basis

The first item that should be checked is how the accounting basis is set for the Profit and Loss report.

Some of your reports will look different depending on whether they're in the classic view or new enhanced experience. Learn more about the new enhanced experience.

Run a Profit and Loss report

1. Go to Reports (Take me there).
2. In the Find report by name ▼ dropdown, select Profit and Loss.
3. Select the Report period and set the Accounting method to how you want the income/expense to be reported.
4. Select Customise.
5. In the Customise report window, select any additional information you wish to include.
6. Select Run report.

Tip: Things to know when you run a report:

• Revenue information can be found in invoices and received payments.
• Paying bills involves tracking expenses.
• Cash reports show the date on the invoice or bill.

Understand what is reported on the Profit and Loss report

Something to think about when troubleshooting missing transactions is knowing what exactly will show on the Profit and Loss report.

Here is a walkthrough of understanding the Profit and Loss Statement:

Often the expectation is that the Profit and Loss report will reflect payments, but that isn't usually the case when the income or expense is recognised.

When troubleshooting missing transactions, consider the following:

• When you receive payment from a customer, that only affects Accounts Receivable and your bank account.
• If you pay a bill, that only affects Accounts Payable and your bank account. These are all balance sheet accounts, which don't reflect on your Profit and Loss report.
• In order to recognise revenue for received payments, you need an invoice created for that customer. This goes for your suppliers, too. To recognise the expense from bill payments, there must be a bill.
• If you don’t use our invoice/receive payments entry system, but instead record deposits, those should show as long as the deposit is affecting an income account.
• If you just record the cheques written or cash disbursements made, those will show as long as an expense account is listed on the transaction.
  Note: If only balance sheet accounts are listed on these transactions, they will not show.
• Check the income account you used when setting up a product/service.