# Remove COGS, Gross Profit & Unused Rows from a Budget vs. Actuals (or P&L)

Your client is a church, a nonprofit, or a service business with no cost of goods sold, but QuickBooks still stamps COGS, Gross Profit, and the other standard subtotals onto every Budget vs. Actuals and Profit and Loss report. There is no checkbox to hide them, so the report carries rows that mean nothing to the client.

## Why this happens in QuickBooks

QuickBooks reports use a fixed statement layout. The income-statement structure (Income, COGS, Gross Profit, Expenses, Net Income) is baked in, and there is no per-report option to remove a subtotal or reorganize accounts into categories that fit the client.

A spreadsheet has no fixed layout. Once the report is in Google Sheets, every row is yours to keep, hide, delete, or regroup.

## How to solve it

### 1. Pull the report into Google Sheets

Bring the Budget vs. Actuals or P&L in with Retriever, accounts and all, no export needed.

### 2. Delete or hide the rows you don't need

COGS, Gross Profit, or any subtotal that doesn't apply: remove it outright or hide it, and the report reads the way the client expects.

### 3. Remap accounts into your own categories

Group accounts into the categories that fit the organization (for a church: Programs, Missions, Operations) instead of the default income-statement buckets. The Summary P&L template does exactly this.

### 4. Keep it refreshing

Your cleaned-up layout stays put; scheduled refreshes update the numbers underneath without touching your structure.

## FAQ

### Can I remove Gross Profit from a QuickBooks report?

Not in QuickBooks itself. The subtotal is part of the fixed layout. In Google Sheets you can delete or hide it, and any other row that does not apply.

### How do I make a nonprofit-friendly P&L?

Pull the P&L into Sheets and regroup accounts into program, mission, and operations categories rather than the default Income / COGS / Gross Profit structure. The Summary P&L template is built for this kind of remapping.

### Do I have to redo this every month?

No. Once the layout is set, Retriever refreshes the underlying numbers on a schedule and your structure stays in place.