{"id":28,"date":"2026-08-07T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/2026\/08\/07\/read-your-pl-in-ten-minutes\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T09:00:00","slug":"read-your-pl-in-ten-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/read-your-pl-in-ten-minutes\/","title":{"rendered":"How to read your P&#038;L in ten minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"anps-lead\">Your profit and loss statement answers one question: did the business make money this month, and why? You don\u2019t need an accounting degree to read it \u2014 just a few minutes and a routine.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"revenue\">Start with revenue<\/h2>\n<p>Compare this month with the same month last year, not just last month. Seasonality hides in month-to-month comparisons.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"margin\">Check your gross margin<\/h2>\n<p>Revenue minus the direct cost of delivering it. A falling margin with steady revenue usually means prices haven\u2019t kept up with costs.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"expenses\">Scan operating expenses<\/h2>\n<p>Look for anything that grew faster than revenue. Software subscriptions and contractor costs are the usual suspects.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"profit\">End on net profit \u2014 and cash<\/h2>\n<p>Profit isn\u2019t cash. If profit looks healthy but the bank balance doesn\u2019t, look at receivables, inventory and loan payments next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The five lines that matter on a profit and loss statement, and the questions to ask when one of them moves. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookkeeping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.accounting.anpsthemes.com\/demo12e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}