Fields

Nominal annual rate

The rate of interest is usually stated as an annual interest rate, referred to as the nominal rate of interest. It is used to calculate a cash flow's net present value (or the discounted value).

The value in this field is the initial rate. When the cash flow contains rate changes, the initial rate is replaced by the rate specified in the rate change event(s).

Compounding frequency / Interest periods

Sets the compounding frequency in the case of compound and actuarial interest, and the unit-period in the case of simple interest.

Available choices (depending on the compute method) are:

Frequency	Description
None	Calculates simple interest between events. IMPORTANT: A new balance is calculated from each event date to the next event date. When adding extra "date" events, this forces interest to be compounded. See the Simple interest and the U.S. Rule pages for more info.

Annually	Once a year or every year.
Semiannually	Twice a year or every six months.
Quarterly	Four times a year or every three months or every quarter.
Bimonthly	Six times a year, every two months.
Monthly	Twelve times a year, every month.
Semimonthly	Twenty four times a year, half-monthly, twice a month.
Biweekly	Twenty six times a year, every two weeks.
Weekly	Fifty two times a year, every week.
Daily (360)	Every day, typically used in conjunction with day count conventions which are based on a 360 day year.
Daily (365)	Every day, typically used in conjunction with day count conventions which are based on the actual number of days in a year.

Continuously	Indicates continuous compounding, i.e. compounding with intervals approaching zero.

x Value (multiplication value)

When a cash flow contains unknown events, FinFlow automatically displays the multiplication value field.

The multiplication value field serves two purposes:

when solving for an unknown, FinFlow automatically enters the value by which the amounts from the unknown events (these are usually set to "1") need to be multiplied in order to result in a zero or near zero net present value
when the user enters a value, results are calculated using this value

For instance, when calculating loan payments, a typical procedure would be to let FinFlow first calculate the solved payment and then enter a higher value to see how much sooner the loan would be paid off.

Auto update checkbox

The Auto update checkbox is used to inform FinFlow whether it should recalculate the unknown automatically, for instance, when you change the rate or the compounding frequency.

Please note that when you edit the multiplication value, the Auto update checkbox is automatically unchecked if it's different from the previous value. To make FinFlow recalculate the unknown and re-enter its value, just check it again.

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