Revenue refers to income generating activity by a business or organisation.
For a cashflow business, such as a restaurant, this is likely to be the daily takings.
For a business that invoices clients, this will be the activities the business carries out and then bills clients for.
Income that is received passively – such as interest and dividends, and all forms of residential and commercial rent – is excluded as revenue.
Calculating affected revenue due to an increase in alert levels
Businesses and organisations needed to measure their revenue over a continuous 7-day period (7 days in a row) in the affected revenue period where your business or organisation had a drop in revenue due to the raise in alert levels.
The 7-day affected revenue period was then compared against a typical 7-day revenue period that starts and ends in the 6 weeks before the alert level rise.
If you'd only been in business for 1 month before 17 August 2021, you could use a typical 7-day revenue period in that time to determine whether there had been a 30% decline in revenue.
The affected revenue period and the comparison period were calculated based on what had happened, not a forecast of what might happen.
Make sure you keep a record of your calculations so you can give it to us if we ask to see it. Records include:
- dates of the affected revenue period and comparison period
- amount of revenue earned in each period
- how the drop in revenue has been calculated.
Seasonal businesses and organisations
Businesses or organisations with highly seasonal revenue must have met the drop in revenue test as set out above. However, they could select a 7 day comparison period outside the 6 weeks before the alert level rise which may be from a past year, which reflects their typical revenue.