Whilst the treasurer's accounts contain a wealth of information, they are not structured in such a way as to allow an easy assessment of the treasurer's income and expenditure. As outlined in chapter three, a number of variations amongst accounts need to be addressed to facilitate comparisons over time. The use of the ‘charge’ and ‘discharge’ system means that the accounts' final totals do not reflect income and expenditure; accordingly, unpaid income has been consistently removed from both sides of the account. The ways in which super expenditure, or rolled-over deficit, was dealt with varied considerably, accordingly, this has likewise been removed. Finally, accounts were not rendered covering a consistent financial year of twelve months. Therefore, comparable annual income and expenditure totals need to be extracted from accounts covering periods ranging from two to thirty-six months.

Ideally, it would be possible to calculate annual totals running, say, from January to December. From 11 January 1565 to 1 January 1581, the entire treasurer's accounts are extant. For this period, therefore, annual income and expenditure totals running from 1 January to 31 December can be calculated. When an account covers multiple years, or data for a particular year has come from two accounts, items of expenditure have been assigned to their year of purchase and any items which appertain to a whole account, such as fees due to accountants, proportionately divided. Calculating income is trickier since the dates of individual payments received were rarely given, but a similar method can be used. First, payments associated with a particular year were assigned appropriately – income from justice ayres and the profits of the coinage most commonly fall into this category. The large quantity of dateless payments can then be apportioned on an average basis. Some annual totals have been constructed from using multiple accounts. In this case a monthly average has been calculated for each year used and these have been combined proportionately to produce an overall total.