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 run 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

  1. Open Reports from the sidebar
  2. Find Income and Expense Report under Financial Statements
  3. Click the card to open the report

Choosing what to report on

At the top you’ll set:

  • Business — required
  • Bank — pick a single account, or check Consolidate all accounts to combine every bank under the business into one report
  • Year — required

Note: 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.

What the report shows

A single wide table with 12 monthly columns (Jan through Dec) plus an annual total. The rows are organized as a top-to-bottom waterfall:

  1. Beginning Balance — the bank balance at the start of each month (January is the starting point you set; the rest cascade automatically)
  2. Income from Account — bank-deposited income for each month
  3. Income from Cash — cash income entered for each month
  4. Categorized Expenses — one row per IRS Schedule C category, with that category’s monthly totals
  5. Uncategorized Expenses — one row per payment method (so anything still missing a category shows up here, grouped by how it was paid)
  6. Adjustments — manual income adjustments
  7. Ending Balance — calculated as Beginning + Income + Cash Income − Expenses. The ending balance of one month becomes the beginning balance of the next.

Because the report cascades, it’s a good visual check that your bank balance reconciles month over month.

Exporting

  • PDF — printable version that mirrors the on-screen layout. Useful for sharing with a client or your accountant.
  • Excel — when you want to slice the data further, build pivots, or hand it to a CPA who likes spreadsheets.

Tips for clean numbers

  • Clean up Uncategorized Expenses first. Anything still uncategorized shows up as its own row 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.