Order of Account Types in a P&L
Quckbooks has a pleasing set of Accounts Types, matching those you would expect to be using in just about all Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss Reports.
However, my classically trained view of a Profit Loss account is this:
Income
less Costs of Goods Sold
gives Gross Profit
less Expenses
gives Operating Profit
plus Other Income
less Other Expenses
gives Net Profit (Called Net Earnings in QB Online)
The key points to this arrangement are the ideas that a management accountant is interested in being able to notice and evaluate changes in income and expenditure in order to inform future business decisions. They do not want these decisions affected by unusual income and expenses that will obscure potential adjustments to the business' operations. These abnormal transactions are kept separate by putting them to accounts in the Other Income and Other Expense Account Types which are then used to adjust the Operating Profit to give the Net Profit for the period.
Quickbooks does not respect this arrangement. Instead it puts Other Income after Costs of Goods! and Other Expenses after Expenses!. Further the Total Income and Total Expenses are added or subtracted where they appear. Consequently, no Operating Profit figure can be produced. I do not understnd this logic.
I tried getting a halfway solution which would be a report which excludes Other Income and Other Expenses using the Filter customisation, however, despite their being bulk types to chose from, without clicking every Income, COGS and Expense account individually I was not able to achieve it.
I have looked and looked for a method of getting control over this behaviour, to no avail.
I am hoping you will be able to tell me that there is somewhere I failed to explore.
