The Cashflow statement

The Cashflow Statement (Reports > Cashflows) provides a month-by-month overview of your finances, both in the past and forecast into the future. 
View a breakdown of your actual earning and spending compared to your budgets per category, and see a summary of your past closing balances compared to your forecast. You can also view your forecast closing balances for the months ahead.

In this user guide

Overview of The Cashflow statement

The Cashflow statement displays the totals of your actuals and forecast side by side for each month in a spreadsheet type format.  

  • The Summary section shows your actual and forecast closing balances for each month along with the actual and forecasted surplus or deficit for each month. 
  • The Income Categories and Expense categories sections show your actual and forecast totals for each category, for each month, with a sum total at the bottom of each section.

Forecast (budgeted) figures appear in columns with the chart icon at the top, while actual figures are presented in the columns headed by a $ icon:

Click on a monthly category total to view the associated transactions

Options for the Cashflows page

Use the  date picker to select the date range you'd like to include in your statement.

You can adjust the Display Settings allow you to exclude specific accounts or change the display width of each column.

Download a CSV file of your Cashflow statement, so that you can use the data in a spreadsheet program like Excel. Just click Download CSV and your download will begin.


Excluding specific accounts or scenarios from the Cashflow statement

It's easy to exclude specific accounts or scenarios from your Cashflow statement.

1
Click on Display Settings

2
Deselect any Scenarios and Accounts that you do not wish to display

3
Click  Save

Hiding or restoring a category on the Cashflow statement

Hiding a category

1
Head to Cashflows ( Reports > Cashflows)
2

Hover your mouse over the category you'd like to hide and click on the  crossed eye icon that appears

3
In the pop-up that appears, click OK


The category is now removed from the Cashflow statement and will no longer be included in the totals on this page.

Restoring a category

1
Head to User Preferences ( Profile menu > User preferences)  
2
Select  Ignored categories 
3
Uncheck the ignored category you'd like to restore under the Cashflows page section and click  Save 


Understanding the Cashflow summary section

The Summary section of the Cashflow statement shows the actual and forecast balances for each month, as well as the actual and forecast surplus or deficit.

How the closing balances are calculated

The closing balances in the actuals column reflect the actual closing balances of your accounts as they appear on the calendar page when show actuals in history is ticked. So, these are not based on the cashflow figures - just on your actual balances.

The closing balances in the forecast column are calculated from your current balance (today's date) plus or minus any future budgeted events. This is the same figure you will find on the calendar on the last day of the month when show actuals in history is unticked.

How the monthly Surplus/Deficit figures are calculated:

The Surplus / Deficit figures are calculated from your total income less total expense for the month, as listed in the Income & Expense sections of the report.

Note

Please note that any ignored categories won't be included in the surplus/deficit figures, but may still affect the closing balances section.

Why does the previous month's closing balance plus the surplus/deficit from the current month not equal the current month's closing balance?

This is in part due to the difference in the way the current month's closing balance is calculated compared to how the previous month's closing balance is determined. 

  • The previous month's actual closing balance = the total of the closing balances of your accounts.
  • Whereas the current month's actual closing balancetoday's balance on the calendar 

Because your current balance may not match your forecast balance (ie.you've likely not spent exactly what you budgeted for) this means that the actual closing balance of the previous month has increasingly less bearing on the present month's forecast balance over time.

In addition, the surplus/deficit figure ( total income less total expense) does not include things like hidden categories and forecast corrections which will affect your closing balance totals.

The surplus/deficit figure will not include:

  • any hidden categories which may affect the balance
  • starting balances for any new accounts added
  • any manually updated balance changes for an asset or liability

Caveat

Also, please note the current month's balance figure does not necessarily equal that displayed on the calendar as the figure for assets/liabilities takes the forecast figure from the last day of the month, while bank accounts take the figure from the current day.

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