Every Daily Report you ever got was a tiny one-day income statement. This week you add them all up and find out whether your venture actually got richer.
Learning objectives. In this capstone you (1) build your season's income statement and its profit margin; (2) build a closing balance sheet and check it against your bank; and (3) judge whether the season created value.
Remember this: the income statement says what you earned. The balance sheet says what you own.
1) Two statements, two questions
An income statement covers a period: did we make money? A balance sheet is a snapshot at one moment: what do we own? Truck book value goes on the balance sheet only.
2) The season income statement
Net Income = Total Revenue − Total Expenses
Profit Margin = Net Income ÷ Revenue × 100
Your Daily Report sorts every cost into four families:
- Variable: food (the ingredients your sales used), wages, fuel and maintenance.
- Fixed: overhead, admin, permits, your district fee, and incidents such as breakdown bills.
- Marketing: your traffic spend.
- Spoilage: 5% of the prep you did not sell.
A one-truck season: revenue $48,500; variable $18,000, fixed $12,000, marketing $3,600, spoilage $900, so total expenses are $34,500. Net income is 48,500 − 34,500 = $14,000, and the margin is 14,000 ÷ 48,500 ≈ 28.9%. (Any cost ÷ revenue gives its share the same way.) Bought or sold a truck? The $10,000 purchase goes in total expenses and a dealer sale goes in revenue, just as your Net column counts them, so net income equals the sum of your daily nets.
Try it
Your season: $42,000 of revenue against $36,500 of expenses.
Net income = Revenue − Total expenses
Fill in the boxes.
3) The closing balance sheet
Closing Cash = $50,000 starting bank + Total Revenue − Total Expenses
Net Worth = Cash + Book Value of trucks
Cash is 50,000 + 48,500 − 34,500 = $64,000. The founding truck sits at its $5,000 floor, so net worth is 64,000 + 5,000 = $69,000. Had this team also bought a second truck 20 days before the finale, expenses would be $44,500, cash $54,000, and net worth $54,000 + $5,000 + $8,000 = $67,000.
4) Did the season create value?
Season Return = (Closing Net Worth − Opening Net Worth) ÷ Opening Net Worth × 100
The team opened at $60,000 ($50,000 cash + a $10,000 truck) and closed at $69,000: up $9,000, a 9,000 ÷ 60,000 = 15% return. But net income was $14,000. The missing $5,000 is depreciation: the truck fell from $10,000 to $5,000 of book value, and that never appeared on a Daily Report. The change in net worth is what says whether you got richer.
Try it
$5,500 of net income on $42,000 of revenue.
Profit margin = Net income ÷ Revenue × 100
Fill in the boxes.
The season review: your whole toolkit, one page
Close the loop on every instrument on the dashboard, in the order you learned them:
- Revenue, cost, profit and margin (Week 1).
- Your realized markups and margins by item (Weeks 2 to 3).
- The break-even you actually cleared, and how often (Week 4).
- What your price experiments taught (Week 5).
- Scaling, payback and ROI on any truck you added (Weeks 6, 12).
- Utilization and per-unit rates (Week 7).
- Your mix and blended margin (Week 8).
- Spoilage and stockout discipline (Week 9).
- Labor per unit (Week 10).
- The growth rate of the bank (Week 11).
- Depreciation and net worth (Week 13).
- Your season's mean, median, spread and trend (Week 14).
The venture you just ran was one long word problem. You now hold every formula it was testing.
Quick self-check
A one-truck season: revenue $21,700, expenses $16,900, no trucks bought or sold, founding truck at the floor. (a) Net income? (b) Closing cash? (c) Net worth? (d) Season return? (Answers: $4,800; 50,000 + 21,700 − 16,900 = $54,800; 54,800 + 5,000 = $59,800; (59,800 − 60,000) ÷ 60,000 ≈ −0.3%.)
Common mistakes
- Dividing margin by expenses. Margin divides net income by revenue.
- Leaving out a truck purchase or sale. If your cash does not match the identity, look there first.
- Judging the season on cash alone. Lots of cash and no extra trucks can equal less cash and a fleet.
This week in the arena
Add up revenue and expenses across every Daily Report of your season, plus any truck you bought or sold, then compute net income and margin. Check that net income equals the sum of your Net column. Then build the balance sheet from your cash and each truck's book value, and ask: did your net worth grow, and by how much?