Net output

Net output is an accounting concept used in national accounts such as the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA) and the NIPAs, and sometimes in corporate or government accounts. The concept was originally invented to measure the total net addition to a country's stock of wealth created by production during an accounting interval. The concept of net output is basically "gross revenue from production less the value of goods and services used up in that production". The idea is that if one deducts intermediate expenditures from the annual flow of income generated by production, one obtains a measure of the net new value in the new products created.

In national accounts, net output is equivalent to the gross value added during an accounting period when producing enterprises use inputs (labor and capital assets) to produce outputs. Gross value added is called "gross" because it includes depreciation charges or Consumption of fixed capital. The calculation is importantly influenced by the definition of expenditures and incomes included within the scope of "production" - some incomes and expenditures are included as "factor income" or "factor expenditure" directly related to production, other are not.

The calculation involves an accounting procedure of "grossing and netting" the revenues which enterprises obtain from their outputs of goods and services, in order to establish what the real value of those outputs is.

This procedure must consistently identify and distinguish between costs and revenues, and between materials or services used up, fixed assets and new outputs, according to a standard valuation. In national accounts, this is especially important because the inputs of one enterprise are the outputs of another, and vice versa; lacking a consistent procedure, double counting would result. In turn, the "grossing and netting" procedure assumes a value theory and a definition of the coverage of production. Once we have that, we can aggregate a multitude of prices to obtain a price for the total value of net output.

...
Wikipedia