Presenting Income/P&L statement: Show how revenue less expenses results in net income

Today you will learn a great visual to use when presenting the Net Income from the Income or Profit & Loss Statement.

Too often Income or P&L presentations to executives or the Board are filled with spreadsheets. In my surveys of audiences they tell me that large tables of numbers are confusing and overwhelming. Our audiences want meaningful visuals instead of confusing spreadsheets.

You already have the tool you need to create these visuals, Excel. That’s right, the Excel you’ve used for years is all you need to create a graph that visually shows the income and each expense area resulting in the net income. I call it a steps to a total graph and you’ll see what it looks like, how to set up the data for the graph and tips on creating the graph in Excel.

The graph you’ll see allows the executives or Board to quickly see which expense areas are the largest, and how the expenses compare to the income.

And don’t worry, I won’t suggest you need to learn VBA programming or buy some add-in that your IT department won’t allow you to install on your corporate laptop. Everything you see is done in plain vanilla Excel.

[bryanlee]

Dave - great work helping us better visualize the income statement. We found your approach the best in making the data quick and easy to digest. Before coming across your video, I'd never seen the income statement visualized like this before (and I've seen an income statement or two in my lifetime). Bet if more people knew about this, we'd see it everywhere.

Oh and by the way, awesome same-day response! All around great work here Dave.

[addictivegamers]

Ok, but how do you then create the chart? Wonderful video. Would be great to learn how to create the waterfall graph you described here.

[ghermanalina]

could you please give the excel you created ? it is hard with just this video to do the same ...