The two words “cash flow”, by themselves, do not show up in your financial statements.
You will NOT see a line item labeled “cash flow” on your P&L, balance sheet, or even in your statement of cash flows.
In fact, if you run the Statement of Cash Flows in QuickBooks, the words “cash flow” appear only once in the report (as “cash flows”)… and that’s in the title of the report.
The title of the report is “Statement of Cash Flows”. That is the only place on the report where the words “cash flow” appear.
There is no line item with a description or dollar amount associated with the two words “cash flow” in the Statement of Cash Flows. Or your P&L or balance sheet.
In the Statement of Cash Flows, you will see line items like “Net cash provided by operating activities”, “Net cash provided by investing activities”, “Net cash provided by financing activities”, “Net cash increase (decrease) for the period”, etc.
Each one of those line items has a dollar amount associated with it. But none of those line items are labeled “cash flow”… and the two words “cash flow” don’t even appear in those descriptions.
No wonder the definition of cash flow confuses so many business owners (as well bookkeepers and accountants).
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