Construction loan and cash-flow report

[Derek Atkins]

"Dwight Tovey" <dwight at dtovey.net> writes:

> Dale Alspach said:
>> I am not where I can check this in gnucash, but there should be no net
>> cash flow except the interest expense. The net cash flow from the loan
>> should be zero since the gain in the house asset is offset by the liabilty.
>
> Right.  That's what I was expecting.  What I get though for this month is
>    total "Money In":  $77,030.02
>   total "Money Out":   $7,807.23
>          difference:  $69,222.79
>
> This month's draw was $69,727.76, which pretty much accounts for all of
> the difference.  It looks to me like the transfer to the "House" asset
> account is not being included in the report.
>
>> I would check the account types
>
>   Construction Loan:  Account type = Liability
>               House:  Account type = Asset

The account types are correct... HOWEVER the cash flow report is
including the "House" account but not the Loan account, so that's why
you're seeing the inflated "Money In".  To fix this you should either
include the Loan account in the report, or exclude the House account
in the report.

See the documentation for a better description of this report and how
it works.

>> and whether you have somehow excluded some accounts from the cash flow
>> report.
>
> Ok, now this gets weird.  I originally just used the default Cash Flow
> report, only changing the start date (Start of this month).  That gave me
> the values above.  I then went into the Options->Accounts view and saw
> that the "House" account was selected, but the "Construction Loan" account
> was not.  In the report, the Loan shows up (in the Money In section), but
> the House doesn't.  If I select the Construction Loan, it disappears from
> the report.  If I then de-select "House", it shows up in the report
> (giving me a negative cash-flow of -$70,232.73).  On de-selecting the Loan
> again, the "House" disappears from the report, the loan does not
> re-appear, and I get the net cash-flow that I would expect.

The report is behaving correctly.

> Am I missing something here?  I would have expected that selecting or
> de-selecting an individual account would determine only if that account
> was included in the report.  I would not expect it to determine if some
> other account was included or not.

Yes, you're missing something.  Please see the documentation for this
report.  I've also explained it multiple times on this list so please
check the archives.  I suppose it should be in the FAQ, but last I
heard that was down again.

The report is behaving correctly.  The selected accounts choose which
set of accounts you want to measure flow.  It creates two groups of
accounts (selected and non-selected) and measures the flow _between
the groups_.  Any transaction solely between accounts in only one
group is ignored from the report.  Any transaction that touches
accounts in BOTH groups is included the in the report.

So, when you include House but not Loan, the transactions between
those accounts get included in the report.  Whether it's Money In or
Money Out depends on the direction of the flow.  If both accounts are
select (or both are not-selected), that flow wont get shown.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available