[GNC] Miscalculation in cashflow reports

[John Ralls]

> On Jul 2, 2019, at 11:01 PM, mongolie2006-gnu--- via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
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> Erdenet (Mongolia).
> 
> Hello.
> This discussion concerns the following bug:
> 797093 – Miscalculation in cashflow reports
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> 797093 – Miscalculation in cashflow reports
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> When there is a split, GnuCash doesn't correctly calculate the cash flow. The attached file, which is essentially the same as the one posted by Fiable.biz (me) in bug #622778, shows a salary of 1 000 € paid for half by bank transfer (in cash), for half from a loan granted to the employee. Now see the cash flow report for the sole bank account, from 2010-01-01 to 2010-12-31, in euros. You'll see that the "money out" is 1 000 €, compensated by 500 € of Money in, while the Money out should be 500 €, and Money in should be 0. The money from A/Receivable doesn't goes to the bank account. It's not a cash flow. It will never appear in my bank transactions statement. My bank cannot know it. It goes directly to the expenses (payroll) account.
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>   When there are multiple credit accounts and multiple debit accounts in a split, my idea is that the amount of money in a credit account should be, for the cash flow report calculation, regarded as distributed between the debit accounts proportionally to the total amounts affected to these debit accounts (and reciprocally, the amount of money in a debit account should be regarded as distributed between credit accounts proportionally to the amounts affected to these credit accounts).
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>   But when there is only one debit account and multiple credit accounts, or the opposite, the calculation is indisputable, and the above example shows a clear bug.From IFRS for SMEs (version 2015, in force), no.7.1:
> "The statement of cash flows provides information about the changes in cash and cash equivalents of an entity for a reporting period" (End of quotation)
> So things don't producing any change in cash or cash equivalents are not "cash flow".
> Therefore I would like that old bug to be corrected...
> Thank you for your attention.


There hasn't been much of a response, perhaps because the presentation here isn't clear.

The bug, https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797093, complains that the Cash Flow report on a single bank account reports the following transaction:

Assets:Bank         Cr 500
Assets:Other       Cr 500
Expenses:Payroll  Dr 1000

as 
Money in:
   Assets: Other         500
Money Out:
   Expenses: Payroll    1000
Difference: -500

Which isn't right: Although the net at the bottom is correct, the report implies that 500 flowed through the Bank and it didn't.

Where it gets more interesting is when there are multiple in and out splits in a single transaction, e.g.

Assets:Bank           Cr 500
Assets:Other          Cr 200
Expenses:Payroll    Dr 600 
Expenses:Else        Dr 200 

In that case, the Cash Flow report on Assets:Bank should show an outflow of 500, but how should it be apportioned between Expenses:Payroll and Expenses:Else? 500 to Payroll, 300 to Payroll and 200 to Else, 375 to Payroll and 125 to Else, or something else?

Or does it even matter?

Regards,
John Ralls