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Profit and Loss and the Statement of Activities

Run an income statement or a statement of activities from your posted ledger in Muin, and know which one a nonprofit reports and why they differ.

Both statements read the same posted general ledger: Profit & Loss reports one organization-wide net income, and the Statement of Activities reports the change in net assets fund by fund and by donor-restriction class.

When you’d use this

  • Your board wants the income statement for the quarter.
  • Your auditor asks for a statement of activities split into with-donor-restriction and without-donor-restriction columns.
  • You need to show a funder what happened inside one restricted fund.
  • You want a PDF you can attach to a board pack.

Which one do I use?

Profit & Loss Statement of Activities
Reports Revenue, operating expenses, net income Revenue and expenses per fund, grouped by restriction class
Dimension None beyond the account The fund on each posted journal line
Answer it gives “Did the organization run a surplus?” “What happened to each pot of money, and which pots were restricted?”
Who asks for it Boards, lenders, a for-profit lens Auditors and funders under FASB ASC 958

A nonprofit reports the Statement of Activities. The P&L is still useful as a single-number view, but it cannot answer a restriction question because it does not carry the fund.

Run a Profit & Loss

  1. Go to Sidebar → Finance → Close & Reports → Profit & Loss.
  2. Set Start date and End date. The screen opens on 1 January of this year through today.
  3. Read it top to bottom: Revenue lines (one per account with activity) and Total Revenue, then Operating Expenses by category and Total Expenses, then Net Income.
  4. Click Download PDF for the board pack. The button reads Preparing PDF… while it builds.

Revenue is the net credit of every revenue account; expenses are the net debit of every expense account. Refunds post to a contra-revenue account, so the revenue total is net giving with gross and refunds shown as their own lines. Only live entries count: a reversed entry and its reversal both drop out.

Run a Statement of Activities

  1. Go to Sidebar → Finance → Close & Reports → Statement of Activities.
  2. Set the same date range.
  3. The statement renders one card per net-asset class, Without Donor Restrictions and With Donor Restrictions, and inside each, one block per fund with its revenue lines then its expense lines.
  4. Each fund block ends in Change in Net Assets, each class ends in Change in Net Assets: {class}, and the statement ends in Total Change in Net Assets.
  5. Download PDF works the same way.
  6. To show the board a comparison, turn on Compare with prior year. Every line, fund, class and the total gain two more columns: Prior year (the same dates one year earlier, read from the same posted ledger) and Change (current minus prior). A fund or account with activity in only one of the two periods still shows, with zero on the other side. Download PDF exports the same three columns while the comparison is on.

Activity posted with no fund is reported under General Operations, inside Without Donor Restrictions: it is never hidden. Releases from restriction appear as a signed line per column that nets to zero across the two columns.

What it affects

  • Nothing. Both screens are read-only views of the posted ledger.
  • What moves them is posting: categorizing transactions in reconciliation, and approving journal entries.
  • The fund on each journal line is what puts activity in the right column of the Statement of Activities. A posting with no fund lands in General Operations.
  • Each account carries its resolved IRS Form 990 field key, which is how the same postings feed the 990.

When it goes wrong

What you see What it means How to clear it
“No ledger activity in this period” Nothing is posted between those dates. Widen the range, or categorize transactions in reconciliation so revenue and expenses post to the ledger.
“No expenses posted in this period.” inside a statement that otherwise has revenue Revenue posted and expenses did not. Check that bills and expenses for the period have been approved and posted.
“Couldn’t load the P&L statement” / “Couldn’t load the Statement of Activities” The finance service did not answer. Reload. If it persists, the service is down rather than your books being empty.
Everything sitting under General Operations Postings carry no fund. Set the fund on the source records, or on the journal lines, so activity lands in the right restriction class.
The statements disagree with the trial balance One of them was run over a different date range, or the trial balance foot is out of balance. Check the period foot on the General Ledger first.

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