In economics, profit is the difference between revenue that an economic entity has received from its outputs and total costs of its inputs, also known as "surplus value". It is equal to total revenue minus total cost, including both explicit and implicit costs.
It is different from accounting profit, which only relates to the explicit costs that appear on a firm's financial statements. An accountant measures the firm's accounting profit as the firm's total revenue minus only the firm's explicit costs. An economist includes all costs, both explicit and implicit costs, when analyzing a firm. Therefore, economic profit is smaller than accounting profit.