Unexpected Cash Flow report behavior. Help?

[Cat P]

Your cash flow report is behaving as expected given your transactions.
You seem to want a different report.

Cat



On 22/11/2013 19:49, ... wrote:
> We are a private school.  Our CPA suggested we keep track of our tuition
> assistance as an expense.  That is, although some families pay less, they
> do so because they have been allocated some amount of the tuition we are
> willing to forgo.
> 
> As an example, start with a brand new account.  Put in only one transaction:
> 
> Income:Tuition                       10,000
> Assets:Checking Account        5,000
> Expenses:Tuition Assistance    5,000
> 
> As far as cash goes, there is only $5,000.  Technically, the client owed
> $10,000, but we forgive $5,000 of it and keep track of it as an expense.
> I'd expect the cash flow report to look like this:
> 
> Cash Flow - 01/01/2013 to 12/31/2013
> Selected Accounts
> Assets
>       * Assets:checking account
>       * Imbalance-USD
> 
> --------------
> 
> Money into selected accounts comes from
>     Income:tuition                 $5,000.00
> 
>     Money In                       $5,000.00
> 
> ----------------
> 
> Money out of selected accounts goes to
>     Expenses:tuition assistance    $0.00
> 
>     Money Out                      $0.00
> 
> ----------------
> 
>     Difference                     $5,000.00
> 
> But instead, it looks like this:
> 
> 
> Cash Flow - 01/01/2013 to 12/31/2013
> Selected Accounts
> Assets
>       * Assets:checking account
>       * Imbalance-USD
> 
> --------------
> 
> Money into selected accounts comes from
>     Income:tuition                 $10,000.00
> 
>     Money In                       $10,000.00
> 
> ----------------
> 
> Money out of selected accounts goes to
>     Expenses:tuition assistance    $5,000.00
> 
>     Money Out                      $5,000.00
> 
> ----------------
> 
>     Difference                     $5,000.00
> 
> This looks to me like $5,000 came out of the checking account, when really
> there is no such transaction.  The real reason this bugs me is because
> sometimes we forgive all tuition for an individual.  Then, the transaction
> for the person does not have anything going into the checking account and
> so is not included in the Asset Cash Flow report.
> 
> Finally, often there are transactions that accidentally have a meaningless
> zero in, zero out, imbalance "transaction".  Then these transactions show
> up in a Cash Flow report for the imbalance account.  So, if there was
> accidentally a zero in, zero out, meaningless transaction associated with
> the checking account, it would show up as cash flow going through the
> checking account!
> 
> I am not an accountant.  I don't know what an accountant is expecting to
> see.  But I feel like this behavior potentially makes the cash flow report
> meaningless.  If this is expected behavior, there should at least be a
> function that removes all of the zero in, zero out splits.
> 
> Will our accountant be confused by GNUcash's Cash Flow report working like
> this?
> 
> Thanks,
>   Elliot
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