# Bottom line

The profit line at the bottom of an [income statement](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/income-statement), after every cost.

It is the line a buyer trusts least in a small business, and for a good reason: the owner decides most of what sits above it. A salary, a spouse on payroll, a vehicle, travel and one-off legal work all pull it down without changing what the business produces, which is why [SDE](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/sde) and [EBITDA](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/ebitda) exist and why a broker quotes those instead. Read this line for the tax story and the [add-backs](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/add-backs) for the earnings story, then ask which of those add-backs a new owner would really stop paying.

In numbers: A shop reporting $40,000 of bottom-line profit on $310,000 of SDE is not earning $40,000; the gap is the owner's pay and the add-backs, and every one has to be argued line by line.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/bottom-line
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt