Revenue and receivables are your primary process when it comes to earning profits, earning resources to spend, to invest.

Something to note is that revenue is just this one stream on your income statement, it’s the stream of your income for the defined period and it arises from the sale of goods or services (whatever your company is in business of doing). There are other streams on your income statement which can be defined as expenses, but we’re not about to discuss those. 

What revenue imposes to your statements is various things. On one hand it’s the income on the income statement, the earnings. On the other hand they generate balance sheet items just as well. Most common balance sheet items are either cash (that is you sell a good or a service and you’re being paid on spot) or receivables (that is you’re being paid at a later date, but you already provided the good or the service to your customer and thus recognise both the sales revenue and a receivable from it).

Revenue and receivables process in itself also include bonuses, rebates to customers, prepayments, factoring agreements and so much more.