How to Run a Profit and Loss Report
Learn how to run a Profit and Loss report in Ardent Seller — step by step. This tutorial walks you through picking a date range, filtering by location, reading every section of the report (revenue, cost of goods sold, gross profit, expenses, and net profit), and exporting the result to CSV, PDF, or print. Perfect for makers, bakers, and small business sellers who want a clear answer to the only question that really matters: did I make money this month?
Transcript
Full narration from the video, broken down by section.
Welcome
Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. If you've been busy at the markets and racking up sales but aren't sure how much actually stays in your pocket, the Profit and Loss report in Ardent Seller is where you find out. Let's run one.
Open the Profit and Loss Report
Reports in Ardent Seller are organized by purpose. Open the Measure section in the sidebar — that's where every report you can run is grouped — and click Profit & Loss. It opens with this month's numbers by default.
Pick Your Date Range
Up at the top, the first filter is the period. Click the dropdown and you've got presets for this month, last month, this quarter, last quarter, this year, and last year — plus a Custom Range option if you need exact start and end dates. Pick whichever period matches what you're reviewing, and the whole report recalculates for that window.
Filter by Location
Right next to the period is the Locations filter. If you sell across a workshop, a storage unit, and a farmers market booth, you can include all of them or zero in on just one. Click any location to toggle it on or off, or use Select All and Clear at the top to jump between every location and none. We'll keep all three checked so the report covers your whole business.
Read the Report
Now the actual numbers. Up top is Revenue: sales revenue, any other income, surcharges you've added, less any discounts, totaled into Net Revenue. Below that is Cost of Goods Sold — the cost basis of everything you sold during the period — and subtracting that gives you Gross Profit. Then come Expenses: operating expenses, marketplace fees, shipping, transaction fees, even waste, losses, and donations. Total those up, take them off gross profit, and the bottom line is your Net Profit — or Net Loss in red, if the period didn't go your way. Below that you'll see Tax Collected, which is a liability you owe — not income. Ardent Seller separates it cleanly so you know what you actually earned.
Export Your Report
When the numbers look right, click the menu button on the right side of the toolbar. From there you can export to CSV for a spreadsheet, download a formatted PDF you can email straight to your bookkeeper, or send it to your printer. Let's grab the CSV — it pops out instantly, ready for Excel or Google Sheets.
Wrap Up
And that's your Profit and Loss in Ardent Seller. If this helped, give it a like and subscribe for more tutorials, and head to ardentseller.app to start tracking your own bottom line.