net change in cash
Think of weighing your wallet at the start of a trip and again at the end. You don't need a diary to know whether you came home richer or poorer — you just compare the two amounts. If you left with 200 and came home with 250, your net change is +50. The net change in cash is exactly that simple comparison applied to a company's cash over an accounting period.
On the cash flow statement, the net change in cash is the single bottom-line figure: the sum of net cash from operating activities, net cash from investing activities, and net cash from financing activities. It can be positive (cash grew over the period) or negative (cash shrank). For example, operating cash of +70,000, investing cash of −180,000, and financing cash of +1,300,000 give a net change of +1,190,000. This one number summarises the entire statement in a glance.
The net change is the figure that bridges the cash flow statement to the balance sheet: add it to the beginning cash balance and you get the ending cash balance. On its own, though, the net change can mislead. A large positive number might come from healthy operations or from a huge loan — very different situations. So the real story is always in the three components, not just their total; the net change is the headline, and the three sections are the article.
Operating cash +70,000, investing cash −180,000, financing cash +1,300,000. Net change in cash = 70,000 − 180,000 + 1,300,000 = +1,190,000. Cash grew, but almost entirely because of financing, not operations.
The headline total — but the three sections tell you what actually happened.
A positive net change in cash is not automatically good news, and a negative one not automatically bad — a healthy firm investing heavily in growth can easily show a cash decrease for the year.