Unexpected Cash Flow report behavior. Help?

[Cat P]

Thanks Carsten, good to know it's a bug instead of expected behaviour.
I'd noticed this with split transactions but I thought it was my
expectations that were wrong.

Cat



On 24/11/2013 09:43, Carsten Rinke wrote:
> Hi ... <010010>,
> 
> could it be you are using GnuCash 2.4.x?
> 
> Then I suppose your are seeing
> *Bug 622778* <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=622778>
> -Miscalculation in cashflow reports
> which will be fixed in GnuCash 2.6.
> 
> Kind regards,
> /Carsten
> 
> On 11/23/2013 11:14 AM, Cat P wrote:
>> 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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