The Best Graph to Show Profit and Loss in Your Business (2024)

You’ll agree when we say profit and loss analysis is one of the key financial tasks you have to undertake in your business or workplace.

And this is because these metrics are the lifeblood of your business. Remember, you need real-time insights into your business’ health. Keeping your profit and loss data in tables is not advisable because you can easily miss critical insights.

Google Sheets, which is one of the most popular data handling tools, lacks these types of graphs. However, the solution is not to ditch this freemium tool.

It turns out there’s a way you can access advanced charts, such as income vs. expense graphs in your Google Sheets. Yes, you read that right.

This blog will walk you through

• Best Graphs to Show Profit and Loss Insights

You don’t want to miss the rest of the blog if you intend to take your Google Sheets skills to the All-Star level.

Before we delve into the best graph to show profit and loss, let’s define the Profit and Loss Statement.

Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement Analysis?

Definition: A Profit and Loss Statement summarizes a company’s revenues, expenses, profits, and losses over a given period.

The income vs. expenses graph shows your business’s ability to generate sales, manage expenses, and create profits. You can prepare it using accounting principles, which includes revenue recognition, matching, and accruals.

Your business’ analysis of profit and loss should be conducted within a specified period, typically a month, quarter, or fiscal year. The main categories found in a Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement includes:

• Revenue (or Sales)
• Cost of Goods Sold (or Cost of Sales)
• Selling, General & Administrative (SG&A) Expenses
• Marketing and Advertising
• Technology/Research & Development
• Interest Expense
• Taxes
• Net Income

Keep reading to discover the best graph to show Profit and Loss insights for decision-making purposes.

Best Graphs to Show Profit and Loss Insights

ChartExpo has the best graphs to show profit and loss insights into your business.

Furthermore, it comes with an ultra-friendly dashboard to help you access income vs. expense graphs, plus many other advanced charts missing in Google Sheets. You don’t need uber technical skills in programming or coding to visualize your Profit and Loss Statement data for in-depth insights.

Here are the 3 best graphs to show profit and loss:

1. Sankey Chart
2. Treemap Sentiment Chart
3. Matrix Chart

Let’s use each chart with examples to show profit and loss.

• Sankey Chart

One of the best graphs to show profit and loss is the Sankey Diagram.

Let’s visualize tabular data below using the Sankey Chart.

To get started with the best graph to show profit and loss, follow the easy steps below:

• Open your Google Sheets application.
• Open the worksheet and click the Extensions menu button.
• Once the Charts, Graphs & Visualizations by ChartExpodrop-down menu shows, click the Open button.

• Click the Create New Chart button.

• You’ll see a list of available charts and graphs.
  .

• Click the Sankey Chart to access this chart.

• Select the sheet holding your data, as shown.
• Fill in your metrics and dimensions, as shown below. In our example, we only have one metric, which is the The dimensional variables to fill in are locations, revenue, expenses, and P&L Analysis.
• Complete the task (above) using the income vs. expense graph maker (ChartExpo) by clicking the Create Chart button.
• If you follow the super-easy steps (above), your final chart should look like this (below).

Insights

A Sankey is one of the best graph to show profit and loss insights. And this is because it provides micro-insights into the flow of revenue and expenses.

For instance, North American sales territory is one of the significant contributors to the profit after tax.

• Treemap Sentiment Chart

A Treemap Sentiment Chart is one of the best graph to show profit and loss insights in your business. In the section, you’ll learn how to use this chart to visualize your income and expense data.

Let’s use a hypothetical oil company’s P&L statement (below) to determine its financial health

To get started with a Treemap Sentiment Chart, follow the easy steps below:

• Copy the data table (above) into your Google Sheets.
• Open your Google Sheets application.
• Open the worksheet and click the Extensions menu button.
• Once the Charts, Graphs & Visualizations by ChartExpo drop-down menu shows, click the Open button.
• Click the Create New Chart button.

• You’ll see a list of available charts and graphs.
• In the search box, type “Treemap Sentiment.”

• Select the sheet holding your data.
• Fill in your metrics and dimensions. In our example, we only have one metric, which is The dimensional variables to fill in are revenue, expenses, and P&L Analysis.
• Complete the simple data visualization task using the income vs. expense graph maker (ChartExpo) by clicking the Create Chart button.

Insights

Treemap Sentiment Chart is one of the best graphs to show profit and loss because it breaks key insights into distinct blocks of colors for easy interpretation by the audience.

• Matrix Chart

A Matrix Chart is one of the advanced graphs you’ll never find in Google Sheets. Besides, it’s one of the best graph to show profit and loss.

How can you use a Matrix Chart to visualize your business’ Profit and Loss Statement?

Keep reading because the above is what we’ll address in the coming section.

To get started with a Matrix Chart, follow the easy steps below:

• Copy the data table (above) into your Google Sheets.
• Open your Google Sheets application.
• Open the worksheet and click the Extensions menu button.
• Once the Charts, Graphs & Visualizations by ChartExpo drop-down menu shows, click the Open button.
• Click the Create New Chart button.

• Select the sheet holding your data.
• Fill in your metrics and dimensions, as shown. In our example, we only have one metric, which is the The dimensional variables to fill in are period, locations, and P&L Analysis.
• Complete the task above using the income vs. expenses graph maker by clicking the Create Chart button.
• If you follow the ultra-easy steps (above), your final chart should look like this (below).

Insights

In the chart above, you can easily compare the loss, expenses, profit, and revenue of each location. For instance, Delaware leads in revenue generated but has a lower profit margin.

Why Do You Need Visualization To Analyze Your Business’ Profit And Loss Data?

The first step towards making your target audience understand your data story is to provide context. Yes, you read that right.

Financial tables, such as Profit and Loss Statements, are time-consuming to analyze for meaningful insights, especially if they are long. How long would it take you to extract actionable insights from P&L statements dating from 5 years ago?

This is where charts and graphs come in.

Essentially, you can extract key insights from your income and expenses data faster using visualization.

Until recently, making sense of all of that raw data was too daunting for us. But recent developments, such as artificial intelligence (AI), are increasingly helping us crunch gigantic data sets on an unprecedented scale.

Remember, there’s a wealth of information hiding in your financial data just waiting to be discovered. In today’s world, we generate tons of data every day.

When leveraged fully, data can help you personalize marketing communication.

Data visualization promotes creative exploration of your business data. With charts, such as income vs. expenses graphs, you can easily extract answers to back key strategic decisions. If you want your target audience (investors, top management, shareholders) to extract key insights into the financial position of your business with ease, use charts.

Yes, use the best graph to show profit and losses.

Why Are Graphs & Charts Important to Your Business?

Profit and Loss data visualization is pivotal to growth because it allows every stakeholder (top management, sales, investors, and shareholders) to access in-depth insights into real-time financial position of your business.

With so much Profit and Loss data available, it’s incredibly easy for you to get overwhelmed or miss out on crucial insights altogether.

That said, ‘trimming the fat’ from the income and expense data is critical to prevent the decision-makers from acting on noise or outliers.

This is where charts, such as income vs. expenses graphs, come in.

Check out (below) how Profit and Loss analysis charts and graphs can improve your business health.

• Process Optimization

By visualizing your income and revenue data in a way that’s logical, digestible, and comparable to other points in time, you can easily identify areas that are underperforming or offering little or no ROI.

For instance, you can easily identify areas in your business where you’re spending more money for little or no returns.

Armed with this information, you can pursue optimal and proactive solutions, such as cutting spending on less profitable business segments.

• Support and Mentorship

Charts and graphs empower you to uncover hidden dips in departmental or individual performance. And this means you can easily spot underperforming business segments and recommend support.

• Strategic Planning & Projections

Data visualization empowers you to identify emerging trends in advance, which means you can easily forecast opportunities and risks.

Using this information to your advantage, you can easily formulate strategies to help you get ahead of the competition while expanding your revenue base. You need the best graph to show profit and loss insights to enjoy the benefit above without subjecting your target audience to cognitive load.

• Communication & Collaboration

As we said earlier, we interpret visual content 60,000 times faster than text and numbers.

Profit and Loss graphs and charts that are easy to interpret can help you get every stakeholder in the same boat, especially when pursuing a common financial goal.

There are many advanced charts that can help you visualize income and expense data for comprehensive profit and loss insights.

Keep reading because this is what we’ll be talking about in the next section.

These charts are currently unavailable in Google Sheets. So, if you’ve outgrown the simple profit and loss analysis and you want in-depth insights, you don’t want to miss the coming section. You’ll learn the best graph to show profit and loss insights.

The tool we recommend to our readers and clients to use to gain access to advanced income vs. expense graphs is ChartExpo.

Our recommendation is based on the following factors:

• Ease of use
• Affordability
• Quality of graphs and charts generated
• The size of the library of chart templates
• Impact on your browser or Excel spreadsheet application

So what is ChartExpo?

Well, ChartExpo is a third-party add-on that comes jam-packed with features that all tick on our checklist above. Firstly, this data visualization tool comes with an ultra-friendly user interface (UI). Secondly, accessing this tool is FREE for 7 days. More so, it produces charts that are remarkably insightful, easy to read, and stunning.

ChartExpo’s library has 50-plus advanced charts you’ll never find in Google Sheets.

Note: ChartExpo is for anyone who needs to create charts and graphs for a variety of purposes, including visualizing financial data. For example, you use this intuitive tool to create charts for blogs, reports, proposals, social media, and more.

FAQs:

Why Visualizing profit and loss data is important?

Financial tables of data, such as Profit and Loss Statement, are time-consuming to analyze for meaningful insights. This is where advanced charts, such as income vs. expense graphs, come in.

You need the best graph to show profit and loss to establish the accurate financial position of your business.

What are the best tools to show profit and loss data?

Google Sheets is one of the popular tools for visualizing financial data. But, it comes with pretty basic charts to handle complex profit and loss data.

To visualize your P&L statement, supercharge your Google Sheets with third-party add-ons, such as ChartExpo to access advanced charts.

Wrap Up:

Visualizing your Profit and Loss Statement shouldn’t be time-consuming at all.

Besides, if you’ve outgrown the basic charts (offered by Google Sheets), try income vs. expenses graph makers, such as ChartExpo add-on for a change.

A quick recap: the best graph to show profit and loss insights are namely:

• Sankey Chart
• Treemap Sentiment Chart
• Matrix Chart

ChartExpo is a third-party add-on you can install in your Google Sheets to access advanced charts for visualizing your financial data. Besides, this tool is incredibly easy to use and has over 50-plus advanced charts.

Give ChartExpo a try this 2021 to get unlimited access to high-level insights from your complex and bulky Profit and Loss Statements.