SG&A: Selling, General, and Administrative Expenses

General costs such as office supplies, telephone bills, and postage are considered to be administrative expenses. Compensation for employees who provide overall support for the company that is not tied to a specific department is also considered an administrative expense. Reported separately from COGS and other operating expenses, companies can evaluate SG&A to assess the break-even or profitability points. The SG&A sales ratio can be used to monitor the trends of a company’s SG&A expenses in relation to sales, providing insight into profit or helping benchmark to industry averages. Accounting for SG&A is relatively simple, though it’s important to separate other expenses such as R&D, COGS, non-operating expenses, and depreciation and amortization. SG&A expenses are usually already calculated on the income statement by adding up selling expenses and general and administrative expenses.

A company must incur many different types of costs to run a business, and many of those expenses are not directly tied to making specific products. These broad costs are classified as selling, general, and administrative costs. Reported separately from COGS, these expenses are deducted from gross margin to determine a company’s net income. They are incurred in the day-to-day operations of a business and may not be directly tied to any specific function or department within the company. They are usually fixed costs incurred, disregarding the amount of sales or production incurred during a certain period.

While generally synonymous, they each can be listed separately on the corporate income statement. Both relate to the day-to-day costs of operating a business that are not directly tied to the production of goods and services. The decision to list SG&A and operating expenses separately on the income statement is up to the company’s management. Some companies may prefer more discretion when reporting employee salaries, pensions, insurance, and marketing costs. As a result, an aggregate total of all non-production expenses is compiled and reported as a single line item titled SG&A. Operating expenses include costs that are incurred even when no sales are generated, such as advertising costs, rent, interest payments on debt, and administrative salaries.

Examples of SG&A Expenses

Net revenue is always reported at the top, then COGS is deducted to arrive at the gross margin. This line item includes nearly all business costs not directly attributable to making a product or performing a service. In a nutshell, SG&A consists of the costs of managing a company and the expenses of delivering its products or services. COGS covers the expenses necessary to manufacture a product, including labor, materials, and related overhead expenses. SG&A covers almost every other operating expense, excluding R&D and depreciation and amortization. SG&A also excludes research and development (R&D) costs, as well as depreciation and amortization, which are different categories of operating expenses.

Over 1.8 million professionals use CFI to learn accounting, financial analysis, modeling and more. Start with a free account to explore 20+ always-free courses and hundreds of finance templates and cheat sheets. SG&A expenses as a percent of revenue are generally high for healthcare and telecommunications businesses but relatively low for real estate and energy.

1. The most common examples are rent, insurance, utilities, supplies, and expenses related to company management, such as salaries of executives, admin staff, and non-salespeople.
2. This means that 26.65% of every dollar XYZ Inc. earns gets spent on SG&A expenses.
3. Depending on the company, the reporting for SG&A may have its own line item or it may be consolidated into operating expenses.
4. Like operating expenses, administrative expenses are incurred regardless of the number of sales being generated by the company.
5. SG&A includes all non-production expenses incurred by a company in any given period.
6. It’s important to keep an eye on this cost month-to-month to assess the profitability and trends.

General and administrative expenses refer mainly to the day-to-day overhead costs. Once SG&A is deducted from gross profit – assuming there are no other operating expenses – operating income (EBIT) remains. The most common examples are rent, insurance, utilities, supplies, child tax credit 2021 and expenses related to company management, such as salaries of executives, admin staff, and non-salespeople. In an income statement, gross profit less SG&A (and depreciation expense) equals the operating profit, also known as earnings before interest and tax (EBIT).

Cut overhead costs

A company’s SG&A budget plays a major role in its success and profitability. This type of expense is also very vulnerable to cost-cutting measures. Once she calculates the SG & A before depreciation, she deducts the depreciation of the office building, the depreciation of the office equipment, and the depreciation of the vehicles. The net $356,550 is the amount that will be reported on the income statement. The 25% ratio means that for each dollar of revenue created, $0.25 gets spent on SG&A expenses. This is why SG&A expenses are often the first to go if a company is trying to reduce costs.

SG&A will be reported on the income statement in the period in which the expenses occur. Hence, SG&A expenses are said to be period costs as opposed to being part of a product’s cost. Since SG&A expenses are not a product cost, they are not assigned to the cost of goods sold or to the goods that are in inventory. The SG&A to sales ratio (also sometimes called the percent-of-sales method) is what you get when you divide your total SG&A costs by your total sales revenue. It tells you what percent of every dollar your company earned gets sucked up by SG&A costs.

These are the day-to-day costs a company incurs for its operations and functionality, regardless of whether or not it generates a profit. For instance, a company may sometimes report selling expenses separate from G&A expenses if one is significantly higher than the other. SG&A will not include interest expense since interest expense is reported as a nonoperating expense. The SG&A ratio is simply the relationship between SG&A and revenue – i.e. the expense expressed as a percentage of total sales.

Selling, General, and Administrative (SG&A) Expenses

In times of financial difficulty, operating expenses can become an important focus of management when implementing cost controls. A company’s management will try to grow revenue while simultaneously keeping operating https://www.quick-bookkeeping.net/examples-of-fixed-costs/ expenses under control. Operating expenses, or OPEX for short, are the costs involved in running the day-to-day operations of a company; they typically make up the majority of a company’s expenses.

SG&A costs are some of the most integral to a company’s day-to-day operations. Importantly, reducing SG&A expenses means less revenue will yield more profit, which is why SG&A is often a target for cost-cutting measures. COGS, or in this case, “cost of revenue” stands above these items, while “income before income taxes” and “provision for income taxes” are the bottom line items above net income. R&D expenses are a company’s investment in itself, money put toward developing new products, improving existing offerings, and remaining competitive in the marketplace.

If this is the case, then different line items will have differing forecast methods. For example, rent most likely will be a fixed dollar value every period. On the other hand, advertising expenses will vary with the strategic decisions a company makes during the given period. As part of its Q financial reporting, Apple reported $14.48 billion in operating expenses for the quarter. Of this, $7.70 billion was research and development, while $6.79 billion was selling, general, and administrative. Companies may aggregate all these expenses in a single SG&A line or segregate selling costs from general and administrative costs.