Building a P&L

A P&L model serves as the basis for your financial reporting and forecasting needs. This guide explains how to build a customizable P&L off of your General Ledger data

In Runway, the basis of your P&L will be multi-level rollups of your financial data—from granular entries (e.g., vendor, GL account, class) to high-level categories like Revenue, COGS, or Operating Expenses. This makes it easy to analyze performance by category and drill into details when needed.

The following steps will explain how to use Runway databases to turn your General Ledger data into a hierarchy — aggregating your data from most granular level to the parent categories you need to report and letting you slice it by department, class or other dimension as needed

The layers are entirely customizable, but often the hierarchy looks like the following:

1. Root: Vendor + GL Account Name + Class
2. Mid-level: GL Account Name + Class
3. GL-Level: GL Account Name
4. Reporting Category: New rollup category
5. Summary: Parent Category

While the example shown is for demo purposes, you can adapt the same concepts — rolling up databases and using lookups — to generate a P&L output for your business needs. You can also explore the full model within our library of example orgs.

We’ll walk through how to:

• Set up your root database with your most detailed GL data
• Use a lookup to map GL Accounts to your reporting categories
• Aggregate data in a hierarchy that suits your business
• Create a Page you can use for reporting and sharing
• Drill-in from the top of your hierarchy to the most detailed data feeding your model

Note: Runway supports many GL integrations including Quickbooks, Xero, Netsuite, Campfire, Rillet and more. If you haven’t connected your General Ledger data, follow the guides for Accounting integrations here.

Step 1: Bring your GL data into a source Income Statement database

1. Create a new **database **by clicking + next to any item in the sidebar

2. Name the database Level 1: Income Statement by Vendor

3. Click edit In the database configuration menu and choose the following inputs:

   • Data Source: Choose the integration source query IS Data

   • Driver: Income Statement Amount

     • Set Using transaction date for dates

   • Segments (which will define each row of data)

     • Vendor
     • Class
     • GL Account Name

   • Add Other columns that will serve as metadata for your segments and be used to group, filter and categorize your GL data

     • Parent Account
     • Account Type

4. Click Confirm to load the database

Step 2: Use a lookup table to map GL Accounts to your reporting categories

If you typically recategorize your General Ledger Accounts into different reporting categories. Follow directions to create a Data source-powered lookup that pairs GL Account Names with a Reporting Category dimension.

Add a lookup column in the Level 1: Income Statement by Vendor database

• Select Insert Values of Reporting Category from **Lookup Table **using GL Account Name
• You will see Reporting Category items populate the lookup column.

You can tell a column is sourced from a lookup if you hover on one of the tags and see a tool tip Value is Autofilled or if you click into the Dimension name column header and the menu says Edit Lookup

Step 3: Configure databases to set a P&L hierarchy

You now want to simplify your view from the raw data by removing Vendor as a segment — this reduces the granularity of this database

1. **Create a new database **by clicking + next to any item in the sidebar

2. Name the database Level 2: Income Statement by GL Account Name and Class

   It’s recommended that the database names you chosse help describe the segmentation — the database name indicates the of the granularity of the data it holds, e.g., Income Statement by GL Account Name and Class

3. Click edit In the database configuration menu and choose the following inputs:

   • Data Source: Set the data source to your root database e.g., Level 1: Root Income Statement database
   • Driver: Amount
   • Segments: Select only GL Account Name and Class
   • Add Other columns for Parent Account or Account Type again, as well as the Reporting Category lookup column

You will repeat the same steps to create linked databases with sequentially less segmentation.

1. Create a new database named Level 3: Income Statement by GL.
2. Click edit in the database configuration menu and select the following:

• Data Source: Set the data source to your Level 2: Income Statement by GL and Class database
• **Driver: **Amount
• Segments: Select only GL Account Name
• Add Other columns for Parent Account or Account Type and Reporting Category

1. Click confirm

Repeat the steps to create interconnected databases segmented by Level 4: Reporting Category and Level 5: Account Type

Your final database will be home to your top-level drivers by Account Type which are the aggregation of all underlying databases. Usually these are Revenue, Other Revenue, COGS, Expense and Other Expense

It’s helpful to organize the sidebar using Sections for Income Statement Data and nest the databases to visually remind yourself of their hierarchy

Step 4: Complete your P&L report on a page

Creating the hierarchy of databases gave us the drivers you’ll need to create an output on a page and start wiring up your P&L with other drivers like Gross Margin and Total Revenue

1. Create a Page from the sidebar
2. Add a drivers table block by clicking the forward / for options
3. Start typing Income Statement Amount in the serach bar to call the drivers from the Income Statement databases you’ve set up

4. You will see Income Statement Amount at all of the segmentations of your databases. Select Income Statement Amount Account Type to pull in the most aggregated drivers at the top of your income statement onto the page

   Now by drilling into your drivers from top-down and by adding new drivers, you will build the your P&L report output

5. Pages have affordances to create new drivers and build formulas, like for Gross Profit

6. You can add drivers to the report via drill-in. If you click the carat to the left of any driver, you will see the sequential drill down through the database stack you constructed.

7. If you select the drivers shown in the drill-in, and right-click, you will see an option to Add to Block. This will add the drivers to your page view

   • The last step is to collapse the Amount COGS driver so only the top level driver and inputs are showing on the report that you share
   • The drill-in view is local to your view, you have to select Add to block to expose the drill-in drivers in a report to share

8. You can apply other formatting options like Hide Driver Name and Format as Text to craft a report that mimics the P&L you present from excel.

By using segments, mapping tables, and roll-up logic, you can transform raw ledger data into a clean, structured, and drillable income statement.

For more advanced analysis, use your income statement output to compare budget vs. actuals, track trends, or share summaries with stakeholders.