Definition: Accounting profit, also called bookkeeping profit, is the net income that remains after subtracting the explicit costs from a firm’s total revenues in accordance with GAAP. These costs include labor costs, raw material costs, distribution costs, and other production expenses.

What Does Accounting Profit Mean?

What is the definition of accounting profit? This is the net income reported on the all GAAP basis financial statements. Accountants subtract a firm’s explicit costs from the total revenues to calculate the accounting profit. Explicit costs are costs that can be clearly identified and measured. For example, labor costs are explicit costs because they represent a specific amount paid for wages during a given period.

All of the costs included in the calculation are amounts actually paid except depreciation expense. This represents the year’s ratable portion of the past outlay of cash required to purchase production equipment. Thus, this also is included.

Accountants do not consider implicit costs in this calculation because they haven’t been incurred and are merely theoretical. Implicit costs are used for the calculation of a firm’s economic profit.

How Accounting Profit Works

Profit is a widely monitored financial metric that is regularly used to evaluate the health of a company.

Firms often publish various versions of profit in their financial statements. Some of these figures take into account all revenue and expense items, laid out in the income statement. Others are creative interpretations put together by management and their accountants.

Accounting profit, also referred to as bookkeeping profit or financial profit, is net income earned after subtracting all dollar costs from total revenue. In effect, it shows the amount of money a firm has left over after deducting the explicit costs of running the business.

How to calculate Accounting Profit?

For calculating Accounting Profit a period you have to deduct all the expenses from the total earned revenue of that accounting period.

Profit = Income – Expense

Profits are shown at the end of the Income Statement. It can happen that the expenses exceed the revenue amount of that accounting period. But it doesn’t mean that the company has a negative profit, it means that the company will show a net loss in their Income Statement. This will show that the company doesn’t have enough revenue to cover the expense of that accounting period.

Advantages, Disadvantages, Limitations of Accounting Profit

Advantages

1. Accounting profit shows the financial position and performance of a business.
2. For comparing two businesses, accounting profit can be useful.
3. Accounting Profit amount is useful while making business decisions.
4. A good accounting profit will encourage more investors to invest in the business.

Disadvantages

1. Cash inflows cannot be indicated with Accounting profits.
2. Accounting profit cannot be used to compare businesses if they use different methods for calculating depreciation, amortization, provisions, accruals, impairments, valuation, etc.
3. There are different methods and laws in various countries for calculating tax amounts and they also differ in ways for presenting financial statements.
4. To show a better picture of a company, accounting profit can be manipulated.

Limitations

1. Only a single period’s performance is measured.
2. While calculating accounting profit, Return on Investment (ROI) is neglected.
3. Some non-cash expenditures do not impact the Accounting Profit but they surely affect the cashflow like amortization and depreciation.

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