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cashflow report improvements

Open simonmichael opened this issue 3 years ago • 1 comments

Ideas from sol to make cf/cashflow more useful:

In hledger cashflow, is there any way of having separate "inflow" from "outflows"? Currently, only the net balance is provided. 
Ideally, "cf" should be "--related" by default and should separate inflows and outflows and then the net balance in the bottom. 
And if a period is provided, it should also show opening balance and closing balance. 
Currently, of the 3 statements hledger provides, "cf" is the one that is most radically different from its real world counterpart. 

simonmichael avatar Aug 11 '22 21:08 simonmichael

One of the questions that comes up most frequently in personal finance is: "Where all did my money go this month?"

Since money you've spent might not just be Expenses, but could be Assets:Receivable:Reimbursements (when you've spent on a lunch that is to be reimbursed by your company), and Liabilities:Credit-Card (when you repaid your credit card debt), etc., as well, neither a balance sheet report, nor an income statement would give you the answer. For this, you need a cash flow statement.

Currently, the cashflow report can't answer this question. I'd like the cashflow report to get to a stage where it can. In order to do so, it needs to separate the inflows from the outflows: "What all did I spend money on this month? [outflow] What all money did I earn/borrow this month? [inflow]"

(After that, more complex business use cases (direct vs. indirect cash flow reports), can be explored.)

the-solipsist avatar Nov 11 '22 00:11 the-solipsist