<![CDATA[Prior studies on non-material profit generally affirm that profit is not merely money, yet few have empirically shown how informal micro-entrepreneurs construct this meaning through their day-to-day trading practices; this gap leaves the theoretical development of social-spiritual accounting largely conceptual rather than grounded in lived experience. This study addresses that gap by analyzing the meaning of profit in the practices of informal small businesses through the perspectives of social and spiritual accounting. This study employs a qualitative method using Husserl’s phenomenological approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, observations, and documentation from four vegetable vendors at a traditional market, with credibility strengthened through source and method triangulation and member checking. The results indicate that profit is not merely understood as the difference between revenue and costs, but also as a blessing received with sincerity and gratitude. Profit is also perceived as the ability to meet family needs and ensure livelihood sustainability. Furthermore, unsold merchandise can be interpreted as a means of sharing, thereby transforming the potential for loss into social-spiritual benefits. Theoretically, this study contributes to social-spiritual accounting by showing that accountability to God and to fellow human beings can be enacted through everyday, undocumented micro-business practices rather than only through formal social or sustainability reporting, and it demonstrates the use of Husserlian phenomenology as a methodological pathway for uncovering such meanings. Practically, the findings suggest that micro-enterprise assistance programs and community-based financial literacy policies should recognize sincerity, gratitude, and sharing as legitimate parts of small traders' economic reasoning rather than treating informal record-keeping solely as a deficiency to be corrected. The novelty of this study lies in the interpretation of profit as social-spiritual accounting grounded in the lived experiences of vegetable vendors.]]>
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