12.1 Purpose of the Statement of Cash Flows

Question: Most organizations prepare four financial statements for external reporting purposes: income statement, balance sheet, statement of owners’ equity, and statement of cash flows. Financial accounting courses cover the first three statements in detail and often provide an overview of the statement of cash flows. This chapter will focus on preparing the statement of cash flows and on using the resulting cash flow information for analytical purposes. What information is provided in the statement of cash flows?

Answer: The statement of cash flowsA financial statement that provides cash receipt and cash payment information and explains the change in cash for a period of time. provides cash receipt and cash payment information and reconciles the change in cash for a period of time. Cash receipts and cash payments are summarized and categorized as operating, investing, or financing activities. Simply put, the statement of cash flows indicates where cash came from and where cash went for a period of time.

Assume you keep track of your individual cash transactions for an entire year in a check register (e.g., checks written and paycheck deposits) and suppose you have hundreds of transactions for the year. Rather than showing every single transaction in a formal report, the statement of cash flows summarizes these transactions. For example, all cash receipts from paychecks are added together and shown as one line item, all cash payments for rent are added together and shown as one line item, all cash payments for food are added together and shown as one line item, and so on. The goal is to start with the beginning of the year cash balance, add all cash receipts for the year, subtract all cash payments for the year, and find the resulting end-of-year cash balance. Although the formal statement of cash flows is not quite this simple, the concept is the same.

Question: Why did the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) create the statement of cash flows in 1987?

Answer: The statement of cash flows was created due to a lack of cash flow information on the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of owners’ equity. The income statement shows revenues and expenses using the accrual basis of accounting, but it does not indicate how much cash was received for revenues or paid for expenses. The balance sheet shows assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity at a point in time, but it does not show how much cash was received or paid for these items. The only cash information provided on these statements is the change in cash from the end of last period to the end of the current period derived from the cash line item on the balance sheet (often called cash and cash equivalents).

Owners, creditors, and managers wanted more cash flow information. They often asked such questions as: Why did cash go down? How much cash was received related to net income? How much cash was paid for the purchase of equipment? How much cash was received from issuing bonds? As a result of the demand for more cash flow information, the FASB formally created the statement of cash flows in 1987 (Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 95, which can be found at http://www.fasb.org). Most companies are now required to prepare the statement of cash flows along with the other three statements. We begin the process of explaining how to prepare this statement in the next section.