Cash Statement Overview

What the Cash Statement is

The Cash Statement is a configurable financial statement generated from your operational data (invoices and projects) and a user-defined Category Tree. It is designed to show:

• Where money is coming from and going to (by meaningful categories you define)
• How those flows change over time (by accounting periods)
• A transparent bridge between “what happened” and “what’s expected”, using optional forecasting features

The Cash Statement outputs to a spreadsheet with a consistent layout regardless of file format.

Why this is not a traditional cashflow or P&L report

Traditional finance reporting typically treats the Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet as primary, and then produces cash views as secondary summaries.

The Cash Statement is built from a different viewpoint:

• It treats economic activity as flows (what the organization produces, buys, pays, and accrues).
• The statement’s structure is not fixed: it is driven by your Category Tree, not by a predefined chart of accounts.

This has two practical consequences:

1. Two organizations (or two users) can generate different Cash Statements from identical invoice data, because their Category Tree expresses different priorities and structure.
2. The statement can serve both as:
   • a statutory-oriented view (what is posted/closed), and
   • a decision-support forecast (what is expected), depending on the options selected.

Background: This is aligned with the “Production Layer” approach described in the product—production is treated as primary, and legacy artifacts can be derived for compatibility.

Core concepts (plain language)

Cash Code

A Cash Code is the code assigned to invoice lines (or to a project that produces invoice lines). It identifies what the line is about from the Cash Statement’s perspective (e.g., a revenue stream, a cost type, a tax-related flow).

Cash Codes are the atomic units the statement sums up.

Cash Statement Category

A Cash Statement Category is a line/group in the statement defined by the Category Tree. Categories are used to organize Cash Codes into readable sections.

Categories have:

• a Cash Type (e.g., Trade / Tax / Bank)
• a Polarity (how the direction of money is interpreted)
• a Display Order (the narrative order in the statement)

Polarity (direction)

Each Category has a polarity:

• Expense: outflows (costs)
• Income: inflows (revenues)
• Neutral: neither strictly income nor expense

Polarity is one of the key mechanisms that allows the statement to be driven by meaning, not by fixed “sales vs purchases” document types.

How the Category Tree drives the statement

The Category Tree is the configuration layer that turns raw operational data into a readable statement.

At a high level, it provides:

• Semantic grouping: Cash Codes are grouped into Categories that reflect how you want to explain your business.
• Ordering: Categories are displayed in a specific order to form a narrative (not an arbitrary alphabetical dump).
• Rollups: Certain sections (Totals, Expressions, and tax-related rollups) derive their values from hierarchies of Category Codes, allowing structured aggregation.

The result is a statement that reads like “your model of the business”, not like a generic template.

What you can include when generating the Cash Statement

When generating the Cash Statement, you can optionally include features that change what is shown and/or how values are computed.

Include Active Periods

Includes values from periods that are not fully closed yet (useful for “current position” reporting).

Include Order Book

Adds forecast values derived from open projects (work not yet fully invoiced). The system determines whether items behave like “sales” or “purchases” based on the Cash Code and polarity rules, and subtracts parts already invoiced.

Include Tax Accruals

Adds accrued tax adjustments (e.g., VAT/corporation tax accrual behavior) to support forecasting and forward-looking decision making.

Include VAT Details

Adds VAT blocks that show VAT-related totals over time.

Include Bank Balances

Adds bank balance sections for cash-position context.

Include Balance Sheet

Adds balance sheet-oriented sections (as a point-in-time companion view).

The statement remains structurally consistent; these options control the presence of specific sections and/or the inclusion of forecast and accrual components.

Who uses what (quick guidance)

If you configure the Category Tree

Your focus is:

• defining Categories and their order
• defining Total Categories (how rollups work)
• defining Expression Categories (computed lines)
• ensuring Cash Codes are classified correctly

Your work controls what the statement means.

If you are a decision maker

Your focus is:

• selecting options (active periods, order book, accruals)
• reading the statement as “what happened vs what is expected”
• using the category narrative to identify drivers (growth areas, costs, cash pinch points)

Your work uses the statement to make decisions.

Next: Configuring the Category Tree

See: Configuring the Category Tree for Cash Statements for how Categories, Totals, and Expressions shape the final output.