Cash flow statements are of great use in the accounting world to monitor the cash in flows and the cash out flows on a daily basis. The cash flow template can be obtained from the annual reports of other companies and their format of cash flow statement can be adopted. The cash flow statement must be kept as simple as possible and it will differ across the sectors with various sub headings and hence it is advised to develop our own customized cash flow statements keeping the cash flow template as the base. Cash flow analysis is one of the major financial analysis technique and some of the business students choose the cash flow analysis as their summer internship project. The cash flow template can be found in the leading finance text books or the text books suggested by the course syllabus.

Different firms adopt different styles of cash flow statements adhering to the GAAP standards of accounting but still the auditors are experts in playing with the numbers and they can show losses as profit and profits as losses and the investors have completely lost faith in the financial statements released by the firms and the analysis done on such reports are of no value. The cash flow template is also available on line at management help and management paradise web sites. There are also various blogs used to explain the importance of the cash flow and financial analysis techniques and a majority of the summer internship projects will be finance related using the financial analysis techniques to analyze the balance sheet and various other financial statements of the firm. Students conduct a trend analysis of the firm's financial performance by analyzing the financial statements for five years and develop a pattern and estimate the future. Inter firm comparisons are also made using the financial analysis techniques and most of the students prefer these types of projects as these projects completely rely on the secondary data which is readily available in the internet in the form of annual reports of the company. Annual reports of companies form a great source of useful information and the cash flow template can be obtained from these annual reports of the companies also. By analyzing the cash flow statement of a company, one can determine where the cash has been going for a majority in the firm and is also used for doing competitive analysis.