Integrating Profit and Loss Report into a set of books and the trial balance

[Wm]

On 06/03/2018 15:13, jcnw wrote:
> I am setting up a set of books for a small church and need to run a month
> profit and loss report.
> How do I enter the Net Income for the Period into the books so it shows up
> in the balance sheet?
> I have set up the books with Income, Expense, Asset and Liability accounts.
> Do I need to set up a P&L account.
> Thanks for help and consideration
> John

You've had two answers presenting different philosophies.

I suggest not closing the book ever.  If you want to do it as a test, 
copy the file and see what happens, it just creates an entry that you 
can delete later so isn't really significant unless you want to be old 
school.

Now for my attempt at an answer.

Presuming your church (and this probably applies to most charitable 
organisations regardless of religion and hopefully not abusing people in 
the third world or obeying the idiot Trump) isn't about maximising 
profits you want three basic reports.

Reports / Inc & Exp / Equity Statement

it tells you where you are and where you were before.  Play with the 
dates so they match what your god(s) expect :)

Reports / Assets & Liabilities / Balance Sheet [1]

you want at least two of these, one at the start of the period and one 
at the end.  Sometimes it is good to offer a third BS dated "today" if 
things have changed significantly since the end of the period you were 
asked to report on.

[1] which balance sheet you use is dependant on your audience, the 
easier to understand one is just called Balance Sheet, the more 
interesting one is the eguile one but it has been known to confuse folk 
as it is a non-traditional BS.

Reports / Income & Expense / Income Statement

To tidy things up you want an Income Statement (or a P&L, same thing in 
gnc but IS probably makes more sense for a church) use the same dates as 
for the Equity Statement and the start and end balance sheets, this is 
so people can see why and what changed.

In plain terms people usually want to know:

where were we then
where are we now
what happened in between
and does it all add up and match what was expected

If you are able to report honestly on those things you'll do your 
community a good service.

Best wishes.

-- 
Wm