Why does the Income Statement not show Cost of Goods Sold?

The purpose of the income statement (also known as a profit and loss, or P&L) is to track your cash flow, or all money going in and out of your business for a particular time period. For inventory costs, that means the income statement shows your total spent on new inventory based on the purchase date.

Cost of goods sold (COGS) is not included on the income statement, because that value only considers your inventory costs for those items that have sold.

For example, just because you sold an item in 2025 doesn't mean you paid to acquire it in 2025. Additionally, many items you paid to acquire in 2025 may not have sold, and you still want to account for those costs when understanding all money going in and out of your business for that time period.

To accurately track cash flow — all money spent and earned during a time period — the Income Statement needs to show your total inventory purchases for that year, not just the costs tied to items that happened to sell.

You can find your COGS value in other areas of Flipwise. Specifically, both the Sales Insights screen or the Tax Report show COGS.