In business, Net income also referred to as the bottom line, net profit, or net earnings is an entity's income minus expenses for an accounting period. It is computed as the residual of all revenues and gains over all expenses and losses for the period, and has also been defined as the net increase in stockholder's equity that results from a company's operations. In the context of the presentation of financial statements, the IFRS Foundation defines net income as synonymous with profit and loss.
Net income is a distinct accounting concept from profit. Profit is a term that "means different things to different people", and different line items in a financial statement may carry the term "profit", such as gross profit and profit before tax. In contrast, net income is a precisely defined term in accounting.
Read more about Net Income: Overview, An Equation For Net Income
Famous quotes containing the words net and/or income:
“There is a potential 4-6 percentage point net gain for the President [George Bush] by replacing Dan Quayle on the ticket with someone of neutral stature.”
—Mary Matalin, U.S. Republican political advisor, author, and James Carville b. 1946, U.S. Democratic political advisor, author. All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, p. 205, Random House (1994)
“We commonly say that the rich man can speak the truth, can afford honesty, can afford independence of opinion and action;—and that is the theory of nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, that is to say, not the man of large income and large expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less than his income and is steadily kept so.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)