Income/Expense report

[Donald Allen]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Mike or Penny
Novack<stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com> wrote:
> Derek Atkins wrote:
>
>> Quoting hendrik at topoi.pooq.com:
>>
>>> Suggesting that calling the "Income Statement" an "Income and Expense
>>> Statement" might have saved someone a lot of work.
>>
>>
>> It was originally called the Profit & Loss report.  Then it was
>> completely renamed to Income Statement, which confused a lot of people
>> (and still does!).   So in 2.3/2.4 the P&L is coming back -- the
>> same report will have two different names.
>>
>> I don't remember who did the work so I can't point my finger anymore.
>>
> Nobody's fault. By accounting custom, what this report is called depends
> upon the nature of the enterprise for which the books are being kept. So
> there is simply no one right answer that can make everybody happy. For the
> non-profit for which I keep books it's a "Revenue Statement". For small
> businesses usually "Profit and Loss" statement and as already mentioned, for
> larger ones usually just "Income Statement" (though of course it might be
> showing a loss for the period). For personal books perhaps "Income and
> Expenses" makes the most sense.

I agree with this.

I actually don't like the name "Profit and Loss", since you don't have
the two simultaneously, at least not at the bottom line. "Profit *or*
Loss" might be more accurate in that regard :-) But kidding aside,
while I can understand how the name "Income Statement" got chosen (as
described in my previous post), I think Michael is right that "Income
and Expenses" is best in Gnucash, especially given the number of
people confused by "Income Statement".

/Don


>
> Michael
>
>
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