A daily-P&L template you can paste into any spreadsheet, today.
A daily-P&L template for a small business needs nine rows, in this order: gross cash, gross card, tax, transaction fees, COGS, variable costs, fixed-cost slice, EBIT, running monthly total. Below is the template — copy it into Google Sheets or Excel and you have a working daily ledger by lunch.
Before we built nouz, half the owners we talked to ran their P&L on a spreadsheet. The other half wished they did. The spreadsheet works — until it doesn't — and what kills it is almost never the maths. It's the shape. Forty-seven rows of "rent, water, gas, sugar, milk, oat milk, cash float adjustment…" and after three weeks you stop filling it in.
This template is what we landed on after talking to roughly a hundred owners. Nine rows. Three minutes a day. It survives a tired Saturday — which is the only test that matters.
Why nine rows (not 47)
A P&L is not a bookkeeping ledger. It does not need every line item. It needs the smallest set of rows that lets you answer one question: did today pay for itself? Anything more is a hobby.
The nine rows below map exactly onto the formula nouz uses internally: gross revenue minus tax minus fees gives you net; net minus COGS minus variable costs minus the daily slice of fixed costs gives you EBIT. Same shape, whether you build it in a sheet or run it in software.
The template
Copy this exactly. One column per day across the top (Mon–Sun, then a weekly total). Nine rows down the side.
| # | Row label | What goes here | Example (one busy Saturday) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gross cash | Total cash taken at the till today | €412.00 |
| 2 | Gross card | Total card taken at the till today | €1,238.50 |
| 3 | Tax (VAT) | Computed: rows 1+2 × your VAT rate | €275.18 |
| 4 | Transaction fees | Card processor fee × row 2 only | €19.82 |
| 5 | Net revenue | Computed: (1+2) − 3 − 4 | €1,355.50 |
| 6 | COGS | Sum of cost-of-goods on what you sold | €421.30 |
| 7 | Variable costs | Today's receipts: cleaning, taxi, ad-hoc | €38.00 |
| 8 | Fixed-cost slice | Monthly fixed costs ÷ days in month | €267.00 |
| 9 | EBIT (today) | Computed: 5 − 6 − 7 − 8 | €629.20 |
How to fill it in, daily
Three minutes at lock-up. Same order every night.
- 01Read rows 1 and 2 off your POS.
Most POS Z-tapes already separate cash and card. If yours doesn't, you have a bigger problem than this template.
- 02Let rows 3, 4, 5 compute.
These are formulas. Set them once. Don't touch them. If row 5 looks wrong on a Tuesday, your formula is wrong, not your Tuesday.
- 03Fill in row 6 from your product list.
Sum of unit COGS for each thing you sold today. This is the row that quietly drifts — see the next section.
- 04Empty your pocket into row 7.
Today's taxi receipt, the bottle of cleaner, the new tip-jar. Anything that left the till in cash for the business.
- 05Row 8 is the same every day of the month.
Compute it once on the 1st: total monthly fixed costs ÷ number of days in the month. Re-compute on the 1st of next month.
- 06Glance at row 9, lock up.
Above break-even, the day paid for itself. Below, it didn't. That's the whole signal.
Three pitfalls owners hit (and how to dodge them)
These are the three failure modes we see most often when owners run this template by hand.
- COGS drift. Your supplier puts up flour 11%, you keep using the old unit cost in row 6. By month-end, row 9 is overstated by a few hundred euros and you don't know why. Re-price your product COGS every time an invoice changes — or use product COGS that updates from supplier prices.
- Forgetting the fixed-cost re-slice. February has 28 days, December has 31. If you don't recompute row 8 on the 1st of every month, your EBIT is off by 8–10% in February.
- Backdating into a frozen week. A receipt surfaces on Tuesday for a delivery that happened the previous Friday. Owners either forget to log it (lost €40) or log it on Tuesday (today's margin tanks). Decide one rule: receipts go on the day the money left, not the day you found the slip. The template tolerates editing prior days.
I ran this exact template for fourteen months before switching to nouz. The template wasn't the problem. The problem was that I was the one re-pricing COGS every Sunday morning, and I always missed one or two.
When to leave the spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is the right tool until two things start happening. First: you sell more than about 25 distinct products, and re-pricing COGS by hand starts eating your Sunday. Second: you open a second location and want to see them side-by-side without rebuilding the formulas. At either point, the spreadsheet stops paying for itself.
If you're not at that point yet — stay with the template. It's honestly fine. Read the 60-second daily routine for the workflow shape that works around it, or jump to what makes a good daily P&L for the underlying logic. When you're ready, our P&L screen runs the same nine rows automatically.
FAQ
Does this template work for cafés, retail, salons and e-commerce?
Yes — the nine rows are sector-agnostic. The only thing that changes is what fills row 6 (COGS): a coffee shop's row 6 sums beans and milk; a retailer's sums product unit costs; a salon's sums product and consumables; an e-commerce shop's also includes fulfilment per unit if it scales with sales.
Where does payroll go — row 7 or row 8?
Row 8, almost always. Payroll for permanent staff is a fixed cost; it doesn't scale with today's revenue. Only hourly casuals you call in for one shift belong in row 7.
What if my POS doesn't split cash and card on the Z-tape?
You need to manually total them from the receipts roll, or upgrade your POS. The split is non-negotiable because row 4 (fees) only applies to row 2. Without the split, every daily P&L is a guess.
Why is tax a deduction from gross, not a separate footer line?
Because the VAT you collected isn't yours — it belongs to the tax authority. Treating it as part of revenue inflates your top line and makes margin comparisons across countries (different VAT rates) misleading. Pulling it out at row 3 gives you the comparable number.
Can I add a tenth row for tips?
You can, but think about it carefully. If tips are pooled and paid out to staff at end-of-night, they're a pass-through and don't belong in any row. If you keep them, they're row 1 (cash tips) or row 2 (card tips) like any other revenue.