The Income and Expense Report is a wide month-by-month view of how money moved through a business in a single calendar year. Where the P&L gives you “the bottom line,” this report shows you how you got there — every category and every month side by side.
When to use it
- Reviewing the year before tax season — spotting an unusual month or a category that doubled.
- Sanity-checking the books — month-over-month patterns make missing or duplicated entries obvious.
- Showing a client what their year looked like — one page, one calendar year.
Opening the report
- Open Reports from the sidebar.
- Find Income and Expense Report under the Financial Statements section.
- Click the card to open the report.
Choosing what to report on
At the top you’ll set:
- Business — the business you’re reporting on (required).
- Bank — pick a single bank account, or check Consolidate all accounts to combine every bank under that business into one report.
- Year — the calendar year (required).
This report always runs for the full calendar year (Jan – Dec). There is no custom date range. If you need a partial period, use the Profit & Loss report instead — it supports From / To dates.
If you don’t pick a bank (and don’t check Consolidate), the page shows just the filter bar and no data. Pick a bank or check the box, then the report draws.
When the report renders, a header card shows the client name, the EIN, the bank label (either the bank name + account, or “All the bank accounts” when consolidated), and the year, plus quick links to jump to the Expenses, Summary, and Reports screens. Those links preserve the business and year, and preserve the specific bank only when you selected an individual bank; a consolidated report does not target a single bank.
What the report shows
A single wide table with 12 monthly columns (Jan through Dec) plus an annual total on the right. The rows are organized as a top-to-bottom waterfall:
- Beginning Balance — the bank balance at the start of each month. January reads the beginning balance you set on the Summary page; the rest cascade automatically from the previous month’s ending balance.
- Income from Account — bank-deposited income for each month (income recorded against the bank, excluding cash).
- Income from Cash — cash income entered for each month (income recorded with the Cash method).
- Withdraw Debts — total expenses withdrawn from the account for the month (categorized + uncategorized, excluding adjustments and cash-credit entries).
- Interest Earned — interest income posted for the month.
- Ending Balance — calculated as
Beginning + Income from Account + Interest − Withdraw Debts, plus Cash Income. The ending balance of one month becomes the beginning balance of the next, which is what makes the report cascade. - INCOME — a bold summary row: Income from Account + Income from Cash.
- Adjustments — manual income adjustments (shown in red).
- TOTAL INCOME — INCOME minus Adjustments.
- EXPENSES section — one row per IRS Schedule C category (with its category code), showing that category’s monthly totals, followed by:
- TOTAL EXPENSES — the bold sum of all categorized expenses.
- NET INCOME (LOSS) — TOTAL INCOME minus TOTAL EXPENSES. When uncategorized expenses exist, Total Uncategorized Expenses is also subtracted.
- Uncategorized Expenses section — one row per payment method that still has uncategorized transactions, grouped by how it was paid, followed by a Total Uncategorized Expenses row when any exist.
Because the report cascades, it’s a good visual check that your bank balance reconciles month over month.
Exporting
Two export buttons sit in the report header, next to the quick-action links:
- Download (printer icon) — generates a PDF version that mirrors the on-screen layout, sized to Letter and landscape. Useful for sharing with a client or your accountant.
- Export to Excel — produces an .xlsx file you can slice further, build pivots on, or hand to a CPA who likes spreadsheets.
Both exports use the same Business / Bank / Year (and Consolidate) selection you have on screen.
Tips for clean numbers
- Clean up Uncategorized Expenses first. Anything still uncategorized shows up as its own rows at the bottom and skews the readability of the report. See the Uncategorized Expenses article for a quick way to clear it out.
- Set the January Beginning Balance. The whole waterfall depends on it — if January is wrong, every month after is too. You set this on the Summary page.
- Reconcile before you export. If you haven’t reconciled the months you care about (Step 4 of the Entry Workflow), the report may be missing transactions.
- Use Consolidate to see the whole business at once. Checking Consolidate all accounts sums every bank under the business into a single waterfall — handy for an overall picture, but remember the beginning/ending balances then reflect the combined position, not any one account.