Profit and Loss Statement
The profit and loss statement, or income statement, reports what a business earned over a period: revenue at the top, then COGS, then operating expenses, down to net profit. It answers "did we make money last month?" For an ecommerce operation the useful version is channel-level, revenue and fees broken out per marketplace and storefront, on an accrual basis. A single blended Sales line hides exactly the comparisons an owner needs.
A channel P&L changes decisions in the first month you have one. Real shape of the numbers: total revenue $140,000 looks fine blended; broken out, Amazon shows $85,000 of revenue carrying $21,000 of fees and returns while Shopify shows $55,000 carrying $7,000. Suddenly the question isn't "how do we grow?" but "why are we pushing ad dollars at the channel that keeps 12 cents of every dollar instead of the one that keeps 26?"
Two things make a P&L trustworthy: revenue built from settlement reports rather than deposits, and COGS matched to sales under accrual accounting. Without both, the statement is a guess with formatting. The structure comes from the chart of accounts, which we covered in detail in our chart of accounts guide; producing the statement by day 10 monthly is the core deliverable of monthly bookkeeping.
Where this shows up in our work
This isn’t textbook material for us; it’s the day-to-day of keeping seller books right. See how we handle it in practice:
Monthly Ecommerce Bookkeeping→