How to Resolve Missing Transactions in a P&L Report
Profit and loss (P&L) reports make it easy to analyze your business’s revenues and expenses. Available to view in Quickbooks, they consist of all recorded financial transactions for a given period. You can run a P&L report to see how much money your business earned and how much money your business spent during a given period. When running a P&L report, though, there’s a chance that one or more transactions will be missing from it. How do you resolve missing transactions in a P&L report exactly?
Check Accounts Receivable and Bank Accounts
If you’re missing one or more transactions in a P&L report, you should check your accounts receivable and bank accounts. While most transactions should appear automatically in the P&L report — assuming they occurred during that time — this doesn’t apply to all transactions. Customer payments, for example, may only appear in your accounts receivable or bank account. Quickbooks won’t display them in P&L reports.
Look for Bill Payments
Another type of transaction that may not appear in a P&L report is bill payments. Bill payments are expenses that involve your business paying a service provider. Common types of bill payments include utilities, internet service, marketing services and more. When you come across a missing transaction in a P&L report, you should consider whether or not it’s a bill payment. Bill payments will only appear in your accounts payable or bank account. Like with customer payments, Quickbooks won’t display them in P&L reports.
Consider Deposits
You should consider whether or not a transaction is a deposit if it’s missing from a P&L report. Deposits will only appear in a P&L report if they are linked to an income account. If there’s a transaction that’s not linked to an income account, Quickbooks won’t display it in P&L reports. Of course, you can avoid this headache by using Quickbooks’ invoice and payments system. The invoice and payments system will automatically record deposits appropriately.
It’s frustrating when you run a P&L report, only to discover that it’s missing a transaction. Maybe the transaction is a customer payment, or perhaps it’s a bill payment. Regardless, you should take the time to resolve the missing transaction so that it doesn’t throw off your business’s financial records.
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