Cash Flow Report Changes

[Robin Chattopadhyay]

I skipped over this thread when it first came up, but I just noticed the
behavior described in #722140. My use case for the cash flow report appears
to match that of Tim Barber and John Halton.

In my household/personal finance (no business features) scenario, I pay a
single vendor for electricity and natural gas. Further, I pay a flat amount
(averaged monthly payment) regardless of usage. Once or twice per year, the
utility will true-up what I've paid with what I owe (or they owe me since
the difference can go either way).

I track the actual monthly expense based on usage and offset the remainder
against a "prepaid expense" asset account.

The transaction looks like this in the register:
Expenses:Utilities:Electricity.......69.18
Expenses:Utilities:Natural Gas...122.18
Assets:Checking.................................(141.00)
Assets:Prepaid Expenses......................(50.36)

In the cash flow report (selecting only Assets:Checking) however, it looks
like this:
Expenses:Utilities:Electricity........50.97
Expenses:Utilities:Natural Gas.....90.03

I understand Carsten's argument (I think) about physical flows, but I think
there is a clear use case for a cash flow report that addresses logical
flows. In other words, my combined expense for electricity and natural gas
was $191.36, but I only paid $141.00 this month and that remaining $50.36
had to come from *somewhere*.

I tried the suggestion of using the Transaction Report with the "Other
Account Name" checked. This, however, didn't solve my problem because the
transactions with multiple splits are just reported in that report as
"Split Transaction".


On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 8:37 AM, Carsten Rinke <carsten.rinke at gmx.de> wrote:

> hmm, no replies so far.
>
> Does that mean there are no cashflow report users out there?
>
> Carsten
>
>
>
> On 04/01/2014 03:12 AM, Tim Barber wrote:
>
>> After upgrading to 2.6.2, I have come across a difference in the Cash
>> Flow report which I believe is not correct. The problem is that now a
>> transaction cannot have both an expense and income. An example would be for
>> a deposit, I have also have a cash expense that I would record in the
>> deposit. This worked well previously because the report would show both the
>> income and expense as well have a single entry in the register which is
>> what I would see in the bank reconciliation at the end of the month (which
>> made the reconciliation a breeze). With 2.6 I can either do a double entry
>> for the Cash Flow report which made reconciling a pain, or have a single
>> entry in the register and the Cash Flow report not show both the income and
>> expense (see Bug 722140 for a complete history). To be honest, I believe
>> how 2.4 worked is correct and in line with other accounting packages.
>> With the help of Carsten Rinke, I have tried everything I believe in 2.6
>> to get it to act like 2.4 but with no luck.
>>
>> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>>
>> Tim Barber
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