when looking at a company s financial statements revenue is often the highest level of financial reporting gross revenue is the total amount of revenue earned by a company for a given period while net revenue is the total amount of revenue less any discounts returns or deductions to make from the total that was sold 
while revenue does not incorporate any expenses operating income does in fact it incorporates almost every expense of a company revenue may demonstrate how successful a product is selling but operating income is more useful in demonstrating how successful a company is at being efficient with how it spends money to incur that revenue it s important to note that operating income is different than net income operating income includes expenses such as costs of goods sold and operating expenses however operating income does not include items such as other income non operating income and non operating expenses instead those figures are included in the net income calculation in almost all cases operating income will be higher than net income because net income often deducts more expenses than operating income for this reason net income is often the last line reported on an income statement while operating income is usually found a few lines above it operating income is similar to a company s earnings before interest and taxes ebit it is also referred to as the operating profit or recurring profit both measurements calculate the amount of money a company earned less a few noncontrollable costs technically ebit may include other operating expenses outside of interest and taxes but for most companies these two calculations will be the same ebitda on the other hand will differ from operating income as operating income deducts depreciation and amortization expense ebitda is calculated without incorporating either if a company does not have interest expenses tax expenses or other non operational costs it is possible for a company s operating income to be the same as its net income example of operating incomethe image below represents apple inc s income statement for the three months ending june 25 2022 it also represents the nine month period for the company through the end of q3 on its income statement apple reported 82 959 billion of product and service revenue up very slightly from the prior year however looking further down its income statement the company s operating income for the three month period was 23 076 billion less than the 24 126 billion from the year before the reason for this is the increase in expenses first the company s cost of goods sold increased from last year to this year second the company s operating expenses also increased both research and development as well as selling general and administrative expenses increased the company spent 11 129 billion on operating expenses the year prior now it had reported operating expenses of almost 13 billion last the company is reporting a very material increase in provision for income taxes as apple inc estimated an additional 1 billion of expenses from what had been incurred one year ago 1 because this expense is not directly tied to operational functions of the company this increase has no bearing on operational income though it does factor into net income 