Cash flow statement

The cash flow statement shows where your cash came from and where it went in a period. It splits the money that came into and went out of your cash and bank accounts into operating, investing and financing activities. Profit and loss shows whether you earned money; the cash flow shows whether you actually received it.

Open it from Reports › Accounting & Finance › Cash Flow Statement. It needs the same permission as the Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss (Journal) and the Accounting section in your plan.

Using the report

1. Choose the From Date and To Date. By default it shows the current financial year up to today.
2. Optionally choose a Project. Leave it empty for all projects.
3. Tick Show accounts to see the accounts behind each line, or By month to get one column per month (for periods of up to 24 months).

Print, PDF and Excel export the report as it is shown, including the accounts and month columns if they are ticked. The printout and PDF are A4 with your company logo and address at the top and page numbers at the bottom (see Using reports).

All amounts are in your base currency. Positive amounts are cash in, negative amounts (in red) are cash out.

What it shows

• Opening cash and bank balance: what was in all cash and bank accounts before the From Date.
• Cash flows from operating activities: the day-to-day business.
  • Customers and other income: cash sales, receipts from customers, income vouchers.
  • Suppliers and inventory: cash purchases and payments to suppliers.
  • Employees: salaries, advances, staff loans.
  • Operating expenses: rent, utilities, office costs, bank charges and other expenses.
  • Taxes: sales tax and income tax paid or refunded.
  • Other operating items: other receivables, payables and adjustments.
• Cash flows from investing activities: buying and selling fixed assets (asset bills and asset payments) and investments.
• Cash flows from financing activities: loans received and repaid (the Short-Term Loans and Long-Term Loans accounts), capital paid in by owners, dividends and owner drawings.
• Effect of exchange rate changes: bank revaluation and the exchange difference of currency exchanges between bank accounts. Shown only when there is an amount. The exchange gain or loss of a receipt or payment is not shown here: it is part of the cash received from customers or paid to suppliers (a 100 USD invoice booked at 130,000 and collected at 131,000 shows 131,000 received from customers).
• Net change in cash and bank and Closing cash and bank balance. The closing balance equals the total of Cash Balances and Bank Balances on the To date.

How each payment is classified

Cash means every cash account (the Cash account and every account under it) and every bank account. For each document that moved cash, the report looks at the other accounts on the same document and puts the cash under the activity of those accounts:

• A receipt from a customer (Cash / Accounts Receivable) is Customers and other income.
• An expense payment (Expense / Cash) is Operating expenses.
• An asset payment or a cash asset bill is Investing.
• A journal that puts a bank loan into the bank (Bank / Long-Term Loans) is Financing.

Accounts you created in the chart of accounts follow the account they are under. For example, a Loan - City Bank account under Long-Term Loans is financing, and a Generator Fuel account under an expense group is an operating expense. If a payment ends up in the wrong place, check which parent account its other account is under.

Some documents are not counted as cash flows:

• Transfers between your own cash and bank accounts (for example a deposit of shop cash into the bank) move money but don't change the total, so they don't appear. A bank fee on a transfer does appear, as an operating expense.
• Opening balances of cash and bank accounts are part of the opening balance, not a cash flow, even when they are dated inside the period.

Unbalanced vouchers and rounding

If a document's debits and credits don't match exactly in base currency (usually a few fils of exchange-rate rounding), the part of the cash its other lines don't explain is shown on a separate Unbalanced vouchers and rounding line, so the statement still adds up to the closing balance. A large amount here means a document was posted unbalanced. Check the period's documents in the General Ledger or the Cash Book.

Accounting Dashboard

The Accounting Dashboard shows a Cash flow this financial year card next to the profit card: net cash from operating, investing and financing activities and the net change, with View All opening this report.

Tips

• Click an account line under a heading to open that account in the General Ledger for the same period and project, then click a voucher number to open the document.

• Profit but no cash? Compare the operating section with Profit and Loss. A big difference usually means customers haven't paid yet (see Aged Receivables) or money went into stock.