1. General Accounting Implementation Guide
  2. Understanding the Statement of Cash Flow

Understanding the Statement of Cash Flow

The Statement of Cash Flows Report (R10521), which reports on the cash flows of a reporting entity, meets International Accounting Standards (IAS) requirements for financial reporting. The statement of cash flow consists of accounts that are part of a company's operating, investing, and financing activities and provides information about how cash and cash equivalents are generated and used by a company.

The system retrieves information for cash flow statements from these tables:

  • Statement of Cash Flow Rules (F10520).

    This table contains the descriptions that appear on the report, the accounts associated with each description, and an indication of whether the accounts normally have a debit or credit balance.

    This table does not include the subtotal descriptions. The subtotal descriptions are hard-coded in the Statement of Cash Flow Report and are based on International Accounting Standards (IAS) 7.

  • Account Balances (F0902)

    This table contains the account balances for the accounts in the F10520 table. The system calculates the net year-to-date postings for the period, based on the F0902 table and the fiscal period specified in a processing option.

On the Statement of Cash Flow Report, the system inserts the words Increase in or Decrease in before the account descriptions for each line as follows:

  • If the accounts associated with the description normally have a debit balance (as specified in the F10520 table) and the balances in the F0902 table are positive (zero or greater), the system concatenates the text Increase in before the description. If the balances are negative (less than zero), it concatenates the text Decrease in.

  • If the accounts associated with the description normally have a credit balance (as specified in the F10520 table) and the balances in the F0902 table are positive, the system concatenates the text Decrease in before the description. If the balances are negative, it concatenates the text Increase in.

If amounts on the Statement of Cash Flows Report are out of balance, an error message prints at the end of the report. An out-of-balance condition occurs when the difference between beginning and ending cash and cash equivalents is not equal to the net increase or decrease in cash and cash equivalents.