The word revenue is part of the accounting and financial vocabulary but it is also used in common language. This occurs because its economic significance makes it extrapolated to everyday life situations.
The economic meaning of the term
From an economic point of view, revenue is spoken of as a synonym of profit or profitability in relation to money
It must be borne in mind that money in a bank can generate benefits in the form of interest. Well, when a certain capital generates a profit, it is said to produce a profit. This term is also used when an investment is satisfactory. On the other hand, if a person has money saved and wants to deposit it in a bank, they must inform about the income offered by the different financial products (fixed-term accounts, bonds, paid accounts, etc.).
The concept of income is equivalent to others, such as dividend, yield, income or interest. Typically, the term revenue is used in a monetary unit or as a percentage. Thus, someone can say that they have obtained a return of 50 dollars in a checking account after 12 months and with an initial capital of 1000 dollars or refer to the return in terms of bank interest.
In relation to the interest, it is worth remembering that to calculate the simple interest of a loan you have to multiply the principal (the amount of money borrowed) by the income (percentage of the loan interest) by the time to pay the loan and everything divide this by a correction index (if time is measured in years it would be 100 and if it is measured in months it would be 1200).
The everyday meaning of the word
If a political leader makes an intervention before the media and the next day is praised for it, someone could say that he has obtained political gain, that is, his intervention has been positive, profitable and useful. With this example it can be seen that the idea of revenue is used in relation to the final balance of a stock. Thus, it could be said that a coach's bet has not obtained any profit if at the end of a match his team has been defeated. Therefore, something is worthless when it is useless, fruitless, or negative.
The term revenue has an economic sense but it is used figuratively in very different contexts. Something similar happens with other economic concepts, such as the word credit (there are people who do not have credit in the sense that their word does not offer guarantees or that they do not have sufficient credibility with others).
Photos: iStock - Michellegibson / Anna Omelchenko
