Reporting Overview
How the Reporting Overview screen groups income, expenses, profit, VAT breakdowns, and exports.
Open Accounts > Reporting > Overview when you want a fast finance snapshot before drilling into a specialist report. It pulls together income, expenses, profit, and VAT-aware totals from live Work Planner finance rows, so it is a good first stop when you are checking performance or preparing to export data.
Filters at the Top
- Date range: This decides which ledger rows are included. The calendar also gives you quick choices such as Today, This Month, and Last 12 Months, which is useful when you want to jump between common reporting windows without typing dates manually.
- Period: Choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly. This changes how the table groups the results and it also resets the default date range to something sensible for that view. Daily starts with roughly the last month, weekly starts with the last 12 weeks, monthly starts with the last 12 months, and yearly starts with the last 4 years.
- Business: The reporting overview only works on one business at a time. If your login can access more than one business, use this field first so the figures and export match the business you actually want to review.
- Clear filters: This takes the screen back to its default state. It resets the report to Daily, restores the default date window for that view, and removes any business override you selected.
These controls do not change any jobs, invoices, expenses, or ledger rows. They only change what this report shows on screen and what gets included in the CSV export.
Details Tab
The main table gives you one row per period. It is built to answer the simple question, “What came in, what went out, and what was left?” without making you open four different screens first.
- Period: Shows the day, week, month, or year label based on the period you chose at the top.
- Income: This total is built from charge rows and tip rows. It is the gross figure, so if your business is VAT registered it includes VAT as well as net income.
- Expense: This total is built from expense rows and write-off rows. It is also shown as a gross figure.
- Profit: This is simply income minus expense for that period. A negative figure usually means costs or write-offs were higher than the charges and tips captured in that same window.
Summary Panel
- Total Income: Adds together every income figure in the current report window.
- Total Expenses: Adds together every expense and write-off figure in the same window.
- Total Profit: Shows the running difference between those two totals.
- Profit Margin: Shows profit as a percentage of total income so you can compare periods without doing the maths separately.
- VAT & Net Breakdown: When the business is VAT registered, Work Planner also shows income VAT, income net, expense VAT, expense net, and profit net. This is useful when you need to sanity-check totals before moving into the VAT report.
Export Tab
The Export tab downloads the current overview as a CSV. It respects the exact date range, grouping period, and business selection you have on screen, so check the filters before you click Export CSV.
When to Move to Another Report
- VAT Report: Move there when you need VAT boxes, sales evidence, purchase evidence, or a clearer explanation of what is excluded from VAT totals.
- Receivables Report: Move there when the question is about unpaid invoices and aged debtor balances rather than profit.
- Ledger Report: Move there when you need to inspect transaction types, failed rows, unallocated payments, or recent finance activity.
- Statements Report: Move there when you want a management-style profit view with refunds, other income, write-offs, comparison periods, and expense-category breakdowns.
Related articles
- Accounts Overview: Step back to the wider accounts home screen and its summary cards.
- VAT Report: Open this when the overview figures need to be checked against VAT-specific evidence and box totals.
- Receivables Report: Use this for live debt chasing and aged debtor review.
- Ledger Report: Helpful when you need to inspect the underlying finance movement behind the overview totals.
- Statements Report: Use this when you want a performance view built around revenue, refunds, expenses, write-offs, and profit.