Difference between revenues and profit


Although both terms relate to the money that a company makes, there is significant difference between revenues and profit.

Generally, revenue means the money that the company makes in various ways. Most typically, revenues are generated from the operation activities, but money may also come from financial operations (e.g. borrowing or lending) or extraordinary items (one-time transactions, such as selling a property).

Profit is the amount of money that a company keeps after deducting expenditures from the revenues. If the expenditures are higher than the revenues, then the company does not make any profit but incurs losses, even if the revenues are high. In this case the company may have relatively high revenues while making little or no profit.

Both revenues and profit are terms used in the profit and loss account. Since revenues are listed on the top, from which other items are deducted, and profit is the result of the calculation in the bottom, revenue is referred to as top line, while profit is the bottom line of the profit and loss account.