Flexible Xero P&L reporting using Bi4Cloud
Xero Profit & Loss data can be presented in a variety of ways. Changing the style of presentation can help users to better understand how a business is performing be it compared to budget, compared to prior periods, across divisions (using Tracking Categories) or seeing monthly or quarterly trends.
BI4Cloud P&L reports over Xero are incredibly flexible, start by taking a look at the following Default Favourite reports. Use these as a guide to start building and saving your own bespoke P&L reports.
Report Types
- P&L - Detail (Analyze type report)
- P&L - Act v Bud MTD v YTD (Compare Dates type report)
- P&L - Monthly (Pivot type report)
- P&L - Summary Monthly (Pivot type report)
- P&L - Act v Bud inc LYR - Ultimate Month End P&L by Account (Classic month end P&L)
P&L - Detail (Analyze type report)
- Analyze by- controls the Rows you see:
- Account - start with Account to see every single GL account in a separate row
- Tracking Category (TC) - change the Analyze by field to TC to summarise each row by TC
- Flexi Level - group similar P&L accounts together using Flexi Levels to create your own customisable chart of accounts and summary P&L (Available in Cool Stuff version)
- Then by- controls the Drill-down sequence (drill-down to months or down to transactions)
- +/- Cols- show or hide columns (use to hide Budgets, display Variances and % or toround numbers to $ not cents)
- Trans Date- controls the Date range selected (use the dynamic dates e.g. Year to Last mth if possible)
- Group by- controls how data is Grouped and Sub-totalled
- Group by Account-Type to show a classic P&L format:
Income | COGS | Gross Profit | Expenses | Operating Profit/(Loss | Net Profit/(Loss) - Group by multiple subtotal levels and different subtotal types
- Learn more -Add Multiple Subtotals - Group by levels
- Group by Account-Type to show a classic P&L format:
To learn more about using the the P&L Detail report see P&L Reporting - Getting Started
P&L - Act v Bud MTD v YTD (Compare Dates type report)
To learn more about using Compare type reports including hiding columns, adding variances and drill down see Compare - Awesome Date Comparison
P&L - Monthly (Pivot type report - to see multiple dimensions at once)
- Change the Pivot dimension
- Time - start with Month or change to Weeks, Days or Years as columns
- Tracking Category (TC) - change to TC to summarise each column by TC to compare P&L by Divisions, Sales reps, Branches etc.
To learn more about using Pivot type reports including adding and hiding fields, using Horizontal and Vertical Pivots formats to add Budget and Variance columns see Pivot - To see Multiple Dimensions at once.
P&L - Summary Monthly (Pivot type report)
To learn more about using Tracking Categories to create P&L reports
P&L - Act v Bud inc LYR - Ultimate Month End P&L by Account (Classic month end P&L)
As flexible as the above reports are (they are all based on the one BI4 GL Profit & Loss II report) we have had to create a special hard coded P&L report ( BI4 GL Profit & Loss Forecast) to be able to produce the Ultimate Month end P&L which is a Classic P&L format that includes columns for all of the following reporting options:
- Actual vs Budget
- Month To Date vs Year To Date vs Last Year
- Full Year Budget vs Forecast where Forecast = BudgetFullYear - ActualsYTD
Using the BI4 GL Profit & Loss Forecast report, select the Date Range for the Month End to report on, then use the +/- Cols to choose which columns to show, hide or to re-order them.
Using Tracking Categories for Divisions? Turn the BI4 GL Profit & Loss Forecast into a Divisional P&L. To learn more about using Tracking Categories to create P&L reports
To learn more about using the BI4 GL Profit & Loss Forecast report including changing columns, rows and subtotals see P&L Forecast - Ultimate Month End.
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