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How does the Profit and Loss report work?

Understand how SILQ’s Profit and Loss report works using cash or accrual accounting. Track revenue, expenses, and profitability to support strategic decision-making.

The Profit and Loss report gives you a clear picture of your firm’s financial performance over a selected period. It compares income against expenses to show how much profit (or loss) your practice has generated.

SILQ allows you to run this report using two accounting methods: Cash or Accrual.

  • Cash - reporting reflects income when it's received and expenses when they’re paid — for cashflow visibility.

  • Accrual - reporting reflects income when it’s invoiced and expenses when they’re incurred — regardless of when the money actually changes hands.

    • When you run the report as the accrual option, you will get an additional option  to compare the report over different periods.

This flexibility gives you the ability to align your reporting method with your firm’s accounting practices and compliance obligations.

Why Use This Report?

  • Measure firm performance: Track how much profit your firm is making over a specific date range.
  • Analyse expense ratios: Compare revenue against staffing and operational costs to assess your firm’s financial efficiency.
  • Support strategic decisions: Use this report to inform hiring, pricing, budgeting, and overall business planning.

Prior to generating the report you are able to customise the way the information is presented to you via the following options:

  1. Date Range - You can choose from any of the following:
    1. Choose a specific date range by selecting a from and to date.
    2. Choose only the 'To Date' and it will give you everything (all time) up until that date.
    3. From the dropdown you can choose pre-defined date ranges such as Current Financial Year or Last Month.
  2. Compare Periods - This will show up only if you have chosen to run the profit and loss on an accrual basis. You have the option to compare 1, 2 or 3 previous periods (same as the period you chose) or 1, 2, or 3 previous year periods.

Below is an explanation of each column to help interpret the data:

  1. Income - Broken out in 2 sections
    1. Fee Income - based on invoices issued and broken down by the accounts setup in SILQ - they will be the 4-XXXX codes.
      1. On the cash report it will only show fee income if the invoice has been paid. 
      2. On the accrual report it will show fee income on any invoices issued. Accordingly, actual receipts received on invoices do not appear.
    2. Income - All other non-fee income including sundries & disbursements as well as bank interest & dividends.
      1. On the cash report it will only show income if it has has been paid into the account. 
      2. On the accrual report it will show income as soon as it is invoiced or recorded regardless of whether it has been paid.
    3. Total Income - a tall of all income received.
  2. Expenses - broken down by the accounts setup in SILQ - they will be the 5-XXXX codes, tallied at the bottom.
  3. Net Profit / Loss - The final result after subtracting all costs and expenses from income. A positive figure indicates profit; a negative figure indicates a loss.