Did last month actually make money?
Enter five figures to compare what last month earned with what your bank account did. See which unpaid invoices, bills or owner draws explain the gap.
By ClarIQ Advisory, the family-run finance firm for growing businesses. No email needed to see your result.
Start here
Five numbers you already know
Last full month. Round figures are fine; this is a size check.
Calculations stay in your browser. Sharing is optional: request the read by email, or attach the displayed brief when booking a call. Your financial figures are excluded from analytics.
Your read
Fill in the first two fields to see it
This is a rough estimate from five figures, not a tax figure or a profit report from your accountant. Read the tool limits.
Money that came in, and money that went out. The other three explain the difference between your profit and your bank balance.
Optional: bring this result to the call
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Remaining question: is this a recurring cash gap? Book a free 30-minute call with ClarIQ Advisory to decide which records would explain the pattern. Bring recent reports if available.
While you are here
Could you answer these five out loud?
Check the ones you could answer right now, without opening anything.
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.
What this assumes
Every calculator hides its assumptions somewhere. Here are all of them.
The five assumptions, in plain words
- Profit here means last month's work less last month's costs, counted whether or not the money has moved yet. This is a simplified accrual-style estimate, not a cash-basis profit report or your accountant's final figure.
- 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. This estimate counts work earned last month, whether or not anybody has paid for it yet. Your bank balance counts the money that moved, whoever it belonged to.
They can differ. This check isolates three causes, but does not reconcile every movement in your bank account.
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?
Only as a rough accrual-style estimate. A cash-basis profit and loss generally follows receipts and payments instead. 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?
The calculation runs in your browser. Figures leave it only if you submit the optional email request or choose to attach the displayed brief when booking a call. Analytics events exclude your financial inputs. The privacy policy explains storage and retention for those requests.
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.
If you sell work rather than product, the other half of the pattern is which jobs paid for themselves: what a matter profitability dashboard should show.
Start with a free 30-minute call and we will tell you what your last few months are actually doing. If the gap is cash timing, the 13-week planner is the self-serve way to see it coming.
Get a free call See the monthly service Get the 13-week planner All free toolsPublished August 9, 2026. Updated August 14, 2026. This is a first read on figures you entered, not an audit, a valuation, or advice on a specific transaction.