Cash Flow View

[Adrien Monteleone]

I second Mike’s comments generally.

What would probably address most concerns in this regard is a default multi-column report that included the basics—Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and perhaps Income/Expense graphs. This would be auto-opened and up to date. If a seasoned/power user didn’t want it, they could just set a preference not to open it at start. Alternatively, it could be a menu entry or toolbar button for easy discovery.

Many questions lately seem to be asked a bit too quickly. But that’s not always the case. In my several years of experience as a Gnucash user, I find much of what I want to accomplish to be quite obtuse discovery-wise. Perhaps this is a consequence of the software being generalized for as many use cases as possible, but I’d suspect more because the reporting system has a very high hurdle for customization. (and the data is not yet easy to extract as with proper SQL, which is of course, in the works)

The recurring questions I see on this list aren’t issues with Gnucash not being able to provide what people are looking for, but that the ability takes some gymnastics, or at the least is not easily discoverable. Certainly, that is something I think can be improved even before the full SQL implementation is achieved.

With regards to the specific question, the answer is, “No, it doesn’t out of the box.”

There IS a ‘cash flow’ report, but this isn’t the same sort of report that I was expecting to see or what is described on most business accounting sites I’ve come across, or the one you are looking for Sean.

The built-in cash flow report shows you which accounts had money going in and out. It is for a time period, but it does not show you a change in position for a particular account over several time periods, say each month for a year. It also will not show you projected balances because it only shows actual recorded transactions. (you could fudge this with future dated transactions that you later delete or adjust but that could get messy)

You can however take the time to set up your recurring revenue and expenses as scheduled transactions. Then you can run a Future Scheduled Transactions Summary report. Again, this report is only for one period. (defined however you want) It is not for multiple periods. But you could create a custom multi-column report, and put consecutive periods in each column. Unfortunately, you don’t get consolidated account names, they will appear in each column. Alternatively, you could run this report for each period, copy and paste to a spreadsheet, then create your consolidated report/graph there.

The Income/Expense chart is the closest I’ve found to something like this, but it only shows historical data, not future projections. (It doesn’t allow for the inclusion of scheduled transactions)

 
Regards,
Adrien

> On Feb 6, 2018, at 10:56 AM, Sean Ford <fordse at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Does GnuCash include a "cash flow" view, i.e., a simple line showing
> projected balance over time based on recurring expenses and income?
> 
> Thank you!
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