How to build profit and loss reports in Bubble

The simplest reliable way to build Profit & Loss in Bubble is to store every income and expense as its own record in the database, tag each record with a date and a type (Income or Expense), and then build a repeating group or backend workflow that sums them using Bubble’s :sum operator. You calculate Profit as Total Income − Total Expenses for any chosen date range.

Data You Need

You only need one datatype, usually called Transaction. Each entry represents money in or money out.

• amount (number) – positive number, not text.
• type (text or option set) – “income” or “expense”.
• date (date) – actual date field, so Bubble can filter by range.
• category (text/option set) – optional. Example: “Sales”, “Software Cost”.
• created by (User) – auto field if important for multi‑user apps.

How to Calculate Totals

Use a Do a search for… with constraints for the date range.

• To get income total: Search for Transactions where type = income, date ≥ Start, date ≤ End, then :sum on amount.
• To get expense total: same search, type = expense, then :sum on amount.

Profit is simply: Group Profit’s data source = IncomeTotal − ExpenseTotal.

Frontend Example

Search for Transactions:filtered:first item's amount // Example of using Bubble expressions

(In the actual editor, you build this with Bubble’s expression editor: Search → constraints → operator :sum.)

Building a Visual Report

• Create date pickers for Start and End.
• Create three text elements: Income, Expenses, Profit.
• Set each text’s data source to the search + :sum expression.
• Optional: Show categories in a repeating group grouped by category using Group by.

Backend Automation (Optional)

If the report must be emailed weekly:

• Create a backend workflow scheduled every week.
• Inside it, run the same searches with :sum.
• Send email with the calculated numbers.

Important Tips

• Never store negative amounts; store the sign using the type field. It keeps formulas clean.
• Use option sets for types/categories so there are no typos.
• Use privacy rules to allow users to see only their own Transactions.
• Test with real records to be sure your date filtering behaves as expected.