Where to find these numbers in your accounting software

Why this guide exists

The calculators on this site ask for things like , current liabilities, and EBITDA. Your accounting software calls them slightly different things, files them in different places, and sometimes splits them across multiple reports. This guide shows you where to find each input in QuickBooks Online, Wave, or a typical PDF report from your bookkeeper.

The fastest path: open the calculator you want to run in another tab, then come back here and look up each input it asks for. Copy the number from your software, paste it into the calculator, move on.

A note before you start: the rows in your accounting software are usually right, but they aren't always. The most common source of bad calculator results is misclassified expenses — things that should be in COGS sitting in operating expenses, or owner draws sitting in payroll. If a result looks wildly off from your gut, the cause is almost always categorization, not calculation. The guide on COGS vs. operating expenses covers the most common mistake.

Quick reference: what each input means

Before we get into specific software, here's the plain-English translation of each calculator input. If you can find these in your books however they're labelled, you're fine.

Calculator input	What it actually is
Revenue	Sales for the period, before any deductions. Sometimes shown as "Total Income" or "Gross Sales".
COGS	Direct costs of producing what you sold — materials, direct labour, freight in. Not rent, not admin salaries, not marketing.
Operating expenses	Everything between gross profit and EBITDA. Rent, utilities, admin salaries, marketing, software, insurance.
EBITDA	Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Usually not shown directly — you compute it from net income or operating income.
Current assets	Things on your balance sheet that will become cash within a year — cash itself, receivables, inventory, prepaid expenses.
Current liabilities	Bills coming due within a year — payables, current portion of debt, accrued expenses, payroll liabilities.
Inventory	Stock on hand at the balance sheet date. Inventory is a current asset, so it's already inside the current assets total.
Total debt	All interest-bearing debt — bank loans, lines of credit, notes payable. Both current and long-term portions, summed.
Annual debt service	Total principal plus interest you'll pay on debt this year. Not the loan balance — the cash going out the door for debt payments.
Owner's compensation	Everything you take out of the business: salary, profit distributions, bonuses, personal expenses run through the business. Used for SDE and owner's salary normalization.

Finding these numbers in QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online has two reports you'll need: the Profit and Loss (sometimes called Income Statement) and the Balance Sheet. Both live under Reports in the left sidebar. Run them for the period you're analysing — usually the last full year or last fiscal quarter.

From the Profit and Loss report

Revenue → the row labelled "Total Income" (or "Total Revenue" depending on your chart of accounts). Use this for the calculator's Revenue field.
COGS → the row labelled "Total Cost of Goods Sold" or "Total Cost of Sales". If you don't see a separate COGS section, it means your chart of accounts has everything in operating expenses — common in service businesses. In that case treat your direct labour and direct material accounts as COGS even though QuickBooks files them lower down.
Operating expenses → the row labelled "Total Expenses" minus your COGS total, OR the sum of all rows under "Expenses" if QuickBooks already has COGS in its own section above.
Net Income → the bottom row, labelled "Net Income" or "Net Profit". Used to compute EBITDA — see below.
Interest expense → look in operating expenses for "Interest Expense" or "Interest Paid". You'll add this back to net income to get to EBITDA.
Depreciation and amortization → operating expenses, often labelled "Depreciation Expense" and/or "Amortization Expense". Add these back too.

To compute EBITDA: take Net Income, add back Interest Expense, add back Income Tax Expense (if any), add back Depreciation and Amortization. The result is EBITDA. The EBITDA calculator does this for you if you fill in each component.

From the Balance Sheet report

Current assets → the row labelled "Total Current Assets". Includes cash, receivables, inventory, prepaids — already summed.
Inventory → the row labelled "Inventory Asset" or "Inventory" under current assets.
Current liabilities → the row labelled "Total Current Liabilities". Includes payables, current portion of long-term debt, accrued expenses, payroll liabilities.
Total debt → sum of every interest-bearing liability. Look for rows labelled "Loan Payable", "Line of Credit", "Notes Payable", "Long Term Liabilities". Don't include accounts payable or accrued expenses — those are operating liabilities, not debt.

Annual debt service isn't on either report directly. Pull your loan amortization schedule from your bank or look at the "Debt" account's register in QuickBooks for the last twelve months — sum the principal and interest payments.

Finding these numbers in Wave

Wave keeps the same two reports under Reports: the Profit & Loss and the Balance Sheet. The labels are slightly different from QuickBooks but the structure is similar.

From the Profit & Loss report

Revenue → the "Income" section total. Wave breaks this down by income account (Sales, Service Income, etc.); use the section total.
COGS → the "Cost of Goods Sold" section total. Wave separates this from operating expenses cleanly. If your business is service-only and you don't see this section, your direct labour is in operating expenses — use that for COGS.
Operating expenses → the "Operating Expenses" section total.
Net Income → the bottom of the report, labelled "Net Profit" in Wave.
Interest, depreciation, amortization → within the operating expenses section, look for line items with these labels. Same logic as QuickBooks: add them back to Net Income to get EBITDA.

From the Balance Sheet report

Current assets → Wave shows assets in two categories: "Current Assets" and "Long-Term Assets". Use the Current Assets subtotal.
Inventory → an account within Current Assets, usually labelled "Inventory".
Current liabilities → the Current Liabilities subtotal under the Liabilities section.
Total debt → look in both Current Liabilities and Long-Term Liabilities for accounts labelled with loan or credit terminology ("Bank Loan", "Line of Credit"). Sum them.

Finding these numbers in your accountant's PDF report

If your bookkeeper or accountant sends you a monthly or quarterly PDF rather than giving you software access, the report you want is usually called something like "Compilation", "Financial Statements", or "Year-End Report". It typically contains both an Income Statement and a Balance Sheet, plus often a Cash Flow Statement and Notes to the Financial Statements.

The line items on a professionally-prepared statement generally follow more standard naming than what you'd see in QuickBooks or Wave directly. Look for these:

Revenue → "Revenue", "Sales", or "Net Sales". Sometimes shown as "Sales, net of returns".
COGS → "Cost of Goods Sold", "Cost of Sales", or "Cost of Revenue".
Operating expenses → may be broken into "Selling Expenses", "General and Administrative Expenses", and possibly "Research and Development". Sum them.
EBITDA → rarely shown directly. The statement will give you Operating Income (sometimes called "Operating Profit" or "Income from Operations"). Add depreciation and amortization to that to get EBITDA. D&A is usually disclosed in the Notes or as a separate line.
Current assets, current liabilities → sub-totalled on the Balance Sheet.
Total debt → look at the Liabilities section. The Notes will usually break out long-term debt with terms; the current portion is shown separately. Both portions, summed, equal total debt.

One advantage of an accountant-prepared report: the line items are usually in standard accounting form, and any unusual treatment is documented in the notes. If something looks off, read the notes before assuming the calculator's interpretation is wrong.

Common gotchas

A few things that trip up almost everyone the first time through:

Owner's draws vs. owner's salary. If you take money out of the business as an owner's draw rather than a salary, it doesn't hit the income statement at all — it's a balance sheet movement. For SDE and owner's salary normalization, you need the total amount taken out, regardless of how it was classified. Pull the equity-account register or ask your bookkeeper.
Mixing periods. If you run a P&L for the year and a balance sheet as of year-end, you're mixing a flow (a year of activity) with a stock (a snapshot at one date). For ratios like cash conversion cycle or DSO, this is correct — those ratios pair flow against stock by design. But make sure you know which is which.
Cash basis vs. accrual. If your books are on cash basis and your business invoices customers on terms, your balance sheet won't show accounts receivable correctly. Some calculators (current ratio, DSCR, cash conversion cycle) assume accrual. If your books are cash-basis, the results will be approximately right but not precisely so. Note this when interpreting the output.
Personal expenses run through the business. Vehicles, phone bills, meals, travel — many small business owners run personal expenses through the business for tax reasons. These distort EBITDA and operating expenses. For ratios used internally, leave them alone (they're real expenses for now). For valuation work — SDE, EBITDA-with-add-backs — strip them out. The add-backs guide covers what's typically allowed.

What to do when you're stuck

If you can't find a number, three options. First, run the calculator with what you have and skip the input you can't find — most calculators tell you which fields are required and which are optional. Second, ask your bookkeeper or accountant for a one-line answer; they almost always know exactly where to look. Third, use AI to extract the numbers from a PDF or spreadsheet — there's a separate guide on using AI to extract calculator inputs for owners who'd rather paste a statement into ChatGPT or Claude than dig through a software UI.

The goal isn't to get every input perfect to the dollar — most of these ratios round to one or two significant figures anyway, and a small categorization difference rarely changes the green/yellow/red verdict. The goal is to get numbers that are close to right, see what the ratios say, and decide what to look at next.