P&L Report

Hello, @drstewart512. I'm happy to provide insights into the potential reasons for missing income in the Profit and Loss report and help troubleshoot the issue.

In QuickBooks Online, the main difference between cash and accrual accounting methods in the P&L report lies in when income and expenses are recorded.

Under cash accounting, income is recorded upon receipt, and expenses are recorded when paid. Conversely, with accrual accounting, income is recorded when invoiced, and expenses are recorded when billed, regardless of when the money is actually received or paid.

To address the issue, it's important to consider the following:

• When receiving payment from a customer, it impacts Accounts Receivable and your bank account, while paying a bill affects Accounts Payable and your bank account. These are balance sheet accounts and don't directly impact your Profit and Loss report.
• In order to recognize revenue for received payments, you need an invoice created for that customer. This goes for your vendors, too. To recognize the expense from bill payments, there must be a bill.
• If you don't use the invoice/receive payments system and instead record deposits, they should appear as long as the deposit affects an income account. Similarly, checks written or cash disbursements made will show as long as an expense account is listed on the transaction.

Also, these are the things you need to know when you run a report:

• With invoices and received payments, the revenue information is contained in the invoice.
• With bills and bills payment, the expense is tracked by the bill.
• The cash basis reports will use the invoice/bill date.

For additional reference, you can check out this article: Why are my income and expense transactions missing from my Profit and Loss report?

Furthermore, QuickBooks allows you to customize reports to display specific accounts and customers or format the layout to ensure the right data appears in the right place.

If you have more questions about reviewing the Profit and Loss report, feel free to ask here, and I'll be happy to assist. Have a great day!

@drstewart512 

"Why is my accrual P&L report not showing income for December? It is interesting the my cash P&L reprot does show that income. What am I missing?"

That will happen if you have received payments in December but have not issued any invoices/sales receipts.  Or, any invoices/sales receipts issued in December do not have services mapped to an income account.