Accounting Profit vs Cash Flow – Difference and Comparison

What is Accounting Profit?

Accounting profit is determined as income/revenue, which is the money you bring into the business less your explicit cost. It’s like the business’s earnings minus the cost of making that money over a specific time period, such as a week, month, or year.

In accounting profit, there are three scenarios, they are:

• Earnings are greater than the cost of obtaining such earnings. As a result, there is a profit.
• Earnings are less than or equal to the cost of obtaining such earnings. As a result there is a loss.
• Apply from an individual to a business.

Accounting profit indicates how well a company is doing in terms of making money, breaking even, or losing money.

A company’s financial statement can be distributed in a variety of formats. A balance sheet containing revenues and expenses is prepared by the accounting department. Account profit is a bookkeeping method for calculating a company’s net profit after all expenses have been deducted.

Accounting profit, also known as bookkeeping profit or financial profit, is a term used to describe the profit generated by an accounting system. After deducting all costs from total revenue, net income is obtained. The formula for accounting profit is as follows.

Formula:

Accounting profit= Total Revenue – Total Explicit cost.

What is Cash flow?

A cash flow statement is a financial statement that shows how much cash entered and exited the company over a specific time period and how much change occurred during that time period. In most cases, cash flow statement analysis is done through an annual report with a one-year time frame.

The question arises: why do we need a cash flow statement if the company declares its net profit on the income statement?

The income statement uses an accrual accounting approach, which counts revenue and expenses at the moment of the transaction, whether it involves cash or not.

The cash flow of a company is separated into three areas in the Cash Flow Statement.

• Cash Flow from operating activities.
• Cash Flow from investing activities.
• Cash Flow from financing activities.

The net cash flow is calculated by subtracting cash inflows from cash outflows for each of the three categories. The overall change in cash is then calculated by adding all of the net cash flow from the three categories.

The cash flow from operating activities is the most essential section of the cash flow statement. If a firm’s cash from operational operations is negative, it’s an issue since it signifies the company can’t meet its expenses through sales and will have to acquire cash from financing activities to pay its expenses. If a company’s cash flow from operating activities is positive and increasing, this is a good sign.

Even if a company makes an accounting profit, if it cannot manage its cash flows efficiently, it will lose money. This is why investors pay attention to a company’s cash flow statement as well as its accounting profit. Investors evaluate a firm’s cash flow from operations to its net income, and if the cash flow from operations is higher, it indicates that the company has high-quality earnings.

Difference Between Accounting Profit and Cash Flow

1. Accounting profit evaluates income and expenses, whereas cash flow considers how much money comes in and goes out of the business.
2. The accounting profit statement shows revenue, whereas the cash flow statement shows the actual cash received.
3. Accounting profit is based on obscure time records, whereas cash flow puts a premium on timing.
4. While capital budgeting, accounting profit is not taken into account, but cash flow is.
5. Accounting profit is calculated using the accrual approach, whereas cash flow is not.

Comparison Between Accounting Profit and Cash Flow