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Did last month actually make money?

The books say you made money. The bank account says otherwise. Both are usually right, because they are answering two different questions, and the difference between them has exactly three causes. Enter five numbers you already know and this page shows you which one is yours.

Built by ClarIQ Advisory, a founder-run firm that does the monthly numbers for growing businesses: the close, the cash forecast, and a plain-English read of what they mean. This is one of our free tools and it asks nothing of you.

Step 1

Five questions. No spreadsheet.

Check the ones you could answer right now, out loud, without opening anything.

1Did last month make money, yes or no?
2How much of last month's work has still not been paid for?
3What did you take out of the business last month?
4Which is bigger right now: what customers owe you, or what you owe?
5Is the money you pay yourself an expense of the business, or a share of its profit?

You can answer 0 of 5. That is the normal starting point, and question five is the one that decides whether your profit figure is right at all.

Step 2

Five numbers you already know

Last full month. Round figures are fine; this is a size check, not a close.

Money that came in Everything that actually landed in the bank last month.

Money that went out Required. Everything the business paid: wages, materials, rent, fuel, subscriptions, tax.

What you took out for yourself Owner draws and transfers to your personal account. If you pay yourself through payroll, that is already counted above, so put zero here.

Of last month's work, how much is still unpaid? Invoices you sent, or work you delivered, that nobody has paid you for yet.

Of last month's bills, how much have you not paid? Bills for last month still sitting in the drawer.

Your figures never leave this browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored, there is no account, and the calculation runs with the network off. Like any site, this one counts page views, and that is the only request the page makes.

Your read

Fill in the first two fields to see it

Money that came in, and money that went out. The other three explain the difference between your profit and your bank balance.

What this assumes

Every calculator hides its assumptions somewhere. Here are all of them.

Profit here means last month's work less last month's costs, counted whether or not the money has moved yet. That is what your accountant means by profit and it is not what your bank balance means.
Money you take out as an owner is treated as a share of profit, not a cost of running the business, because that is what it is. Money you pay yourself through payroll is a cost, and belongs in what went out.
One month, standing alone. No opening balances, nothing carried in from earlier months, no invoices from before last month.
Buying equipment or paying down a loan is not a running cost, but the money still leaves the bank. If you did either last month, this page will read the month as worse than it was, and the gap it names will be smaller than the real one.
Rounded figures give a rounded answer. This is a first look, not a close and not an audit.

Why the two numbers disagree

They are answering different questions, and both answers are correct. Profit counts the work you did last month, whether or not anybody has paid for it yet. Your bank balance counts the money that moved, whoever it belonged to. Those are never the same figure, and the whole distance between them is made of three things.

Two are obvious once named: invoices customers have not paid you are profit you have earned and cannot spend, and bills you have not paid yet are costs you have incurred and still hold. The third one catches almost everyone. The money you take out of the business is not an expense, so it never appears anywhere on your profit and loss, and it leaves the bank all the same. A perfectly profitable month can empty an account entirely through that one line, and nothing on the report will mention it.

The moment it usually surfaces

Payroll is Friday. The books say the last quarter was the best one you have had, so you go to move the money across and it is not there. Nothing has gone wrong and nobody has stolen anything. The work got done, the invoices went out, some of them are sitting at sixty days, you took what you needed to live on, and the account is empty. Then the year ends and there is a tax bill on profit you never saw in cash, which is the same gap arriving a second time with a deadline attached.

What the monthly service does that this page cannot

This page reads one month you typed in from memory. One month cannot tell you whether it is a pattern or a bad week, and it cannot see the things that quietly drain an account across a year: loan principal, equipment, tax set aside or not set aside, invoices from months you have already forgotten. The monthly service runs the same reconciliation off your actual books every month, on a fixed timeline, and hands you a plain-English read of what moved and what to do about it. A human checks every figure before it reaches you.

Asked often

Why does the money I pay myself change the answer?

Because a draw and a wage are different things. Money you pay yourself through payroll is a cost of running the business and belongs in what went out. Money you simply move across to your personal account is a share of the profit, not a cost, so it never appears anywhere on your profit and loss. Both empty the bank in exactly the same way, which is why an owner can look at a profitable month and an empty account and assume one of the two must be wrong. Neither is.

Is this the same as my profit and loss?

Close, and deliberately not identical. It counts last month's work against last month's costs, which is what a profit and loss does. It does not carry in opening balances, invoices from earlier months, depreciation, or the adjustments an accountant makes at the year end. Treat it as the size of the gap rather than the audited figure. If the gap looks material, that is the finding, and it will still be there when someone reads it properly.

What if I bought equipment or paid down a loan last month?

Then this page reads the month as worse than it was. Both leave the bank and neither is a running cost, so they sit inside what went out here, while a proper profit and loss would keep them separate. If last month included either, correct for it as you read: the month earned more than this page says, and the real distance between your profit and your bank balance is wider than the one shown, not narrower.

Does anything I type get sent anywhere?

No. Every figure you enter is used in your browser and nowhere else. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, there is no account, and closing the tab is all it takes to be rid of them. Disconnect from the network and the check still runs, which is the easiest way to prove it. To be exact about what you would see in a network tab: the page counts a view the way every page on this site does, and that request carries no part of what you typed.

One month is a snapshot. The pattern is the answer.

A single month can be a slow payer, a big order, or a quarter tax bill landing all at once. What matters is whether the same gap opens every month, and that takes more than one number. Start with a free 30-minute call and we will tell you what your last few months are actually doing.

Book a free 30-minute call See the monthly service

Published August 9, 2026. This is a first read on figures you entered, not an audit, a valuation, or advice on a specific transaction.