How cash flow works

Cash flow shows where your money went: how much came in, how much went out, and how it changed over time. guito builds this view from the movements in your bank accounts, grouped by category and by period. You’ll find it under Cash flow (/transactions). This page explains how those numbers are calculated, so you always understand where each total comes from.

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The amount sign decides the direction

The core rule is simple: the sign of each movement determines which side of the analysis it lands on.

• Positive amount: money that came in (income side).
• Negative amount: money that went out (expense side).

This rule applies everywhere: in the header totals, the monthly chart, the category breakdown, and the colors in the movement list. The header totals reflect what actually came in and went out:

• Income: the sum of all movements with a positive amount.
• Expenses: the sum of the absolute value of all movements with a negative amount.
• Balance: the difference between the two.

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The category is a label, it doesn’t pick the side

A movement’s category (for example, “Rent” or “Salary”) helps you organize and read your data, but it does not decide whether the movement counts as income or expense. The amount sign decides that. The same category can appear on both sides when it has movements in both directions. For example, if you paid 1,400 € in rent and received a 700 € reimbursement from someone you share a home with, the “Rent” category shows 1,400 € on the expense side and 700 € on the income side, leaving the real cost visible.

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What’s left out of the analysis

So that totals reflect only money that actually came in or went out, guito leaves out two kinds of movements:

• Matched internal transfers. When you move money between your own accounts, that amount is neither income nor expense, it’s the same money changing places. When guito recognizes the pair (same amount, opposite signs, within the same time window), both transactions are linked and excluded from the totals.
• Movements excluded from cash flow. You can manually mark a movement to stop it counting toward income and expense totals. It stays visible in the list, with a minus-circle icon, but it doesn’t enter the sums.

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When you adjust the analysis yourself

Most transfers are detected automatically: when guito recognizes a mirrored amount across two of your accounts but the signal isn’t enough to decide on its own, a suggestion appears on the Overview that you can confirm with one click. When detection isn’t enough, you stay in control of what counts. You can link the two ends of a transfer between your own accounts by hand, so the pair drops out of the totals, and you can exclude any single movement (for example, a technical bank entry) that shouldn’t count toward the analysis. An excluded movement stays visible in the list but doesn’t enter the sums, and you can include it again at any time. The step-by-step for both lives in Transactions and cash flow.

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The role of categories

Each movement is given a category automatically from the bank data, and you can adjust it whenever you want. Categories don’t change which side a movement falls on, but they are the basis for the breakdown, so a correction is what makes the per-category totals match how you actually think about your spending. To understand how categories are assigned and corrected, see Automatic categorization. For analysis by category or by merchant, you can also ask guito’s assistant questions like “Where do I spend the most money?” or “How much did I spend on restaurants this month?”. The assistant reads the same categorized movements and can filter by period (week, month, quarter, or year).

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Dates and time zone

Each transaction shows the calendar day the bank recorded, regardless of the time zone you’re in. A user in the Azores, in Lisbon, or in Tokyo always sees the same day for the same transaction: the day on the bank statement.

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Currency

All totals are shown in euros. Movements in a foreign currency are converted to euros before they enter the sums, so the math makes sense even with accounts in different currencies.

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