How the numbers are calculated
The plain-math behind portfolio value, cash flow and monthly cash flow — reproduce them yourself.
5 min read
Steer never wants a number to feel like magic. Everything on your Finance screens is built from a few simple rules. Grab a calculator and you should land on exactly the same figures.
Money is exact
Behind the scenes every amount is held to the cent, so totals always add up. What you see is just rounded for display.
The three headline numbers
Your bottom line — everything you hold: cash + investments + loans.
Your spendable side: cash across accounts + the loans you hold.
What your accounts gain or lose each month.
Portfolio value
Portfolio value = cash across every account + what your investments are worth + the loans you hold.
This is the big number — everything you hold, whether it's cash or not. A loan counts here too: it's money that's yours to use, even though you'll repay it later. If your cash adds up to €13,790.01, your investments are worth €8,727.68 and you hold €11,872.02 in loans:
€13,790.01 + €8,727.68 + €11,872.02 = €34,389.71
Cash flow
Cash flow = cash across every account + the loans you hold.
This is the spendable part of your portfolio — everything except investments. Same example, without the €8,727.68 of investments:
€13,790.01 + €11,872.02 = €25,662.03
How the two relate
Cash flow is the everyday picture: the money you can spend, including what you've borrowed. Portfolio value adds what your investments are worth on top. Open Finance → Breakdown and the "How your portfolio value adds up" card shows every line, from cash flow up to the full portfolio.
Monthly cash flow
Monthly cash flow = income − expenses − loan repayments − investment contributions.
Everything is converted to a per-month figure first (see below), then it's simply money in minus everything out. A positive number means your accounts grow that month; a negative one means they shrink.
When a loan or investment starts
The day a loan starts, the money you borrow lands in your account — so Steer counts the loan amount as income that month. The day an investment starts, the money you put in leaves your account — so the starting balance counts as an expense that month. (This only applies when the loan or investment starts after the account was opened; anything from before is already part of your opening balance.)
Turning any cadence into "per month"
Income and expenses can repeat on any schedule. To compare them, Steer converts each to a monthly figure using fixed, simple conversions:
Weekly → ×4
A €100/week cost counts as €400/month (4 weeks per month).
Daily → ×30
A €3.50/day coffee counts as €105/month (30 days per month).
Monthly → ×1
Used as-is.
Quarterly → ÷3
A €300/quarter bill counts as €100/month.
Yearly → ÷12
A €1,200/year insurance counts as €100/month.
One-off items
A one-off has no monthly rhythm, so it's left out of the monthly cash-flow figure. It still lands on your projection in the month it happens.
Amounts that change over time
When you schedule a future price (say rent rising next year), Steer always uses the most recent amount that has taken effect on or before the month it's calculating. Before the change it uses the old amount; from the change onward, the new one.
How balances move forward
Your account balance line is just running addition:
This month's balance = last month's balance + (money in − money out) that month.
Anchored to today's balance, it walks backward (subtracting each month's net) to fill in the past and forward (adding it) to project ahead — which is why the balance line and the cash-flow bars always reconcile.
Loans
Each repayment splits into interest and principal:
Interest
Outstanding balance × the monthly rate (your APR ÷ 12).
Principal
The rest of the payment — what actually reduces what you owe.
New balance
Old balance − principal paid.
The fixed monthly payment is the standard amortization amount that pays the loan to zero over its term, so early payments are mostly interest and later ones mostly principal.
Investments
Each month an investment grows by its return and then takes your contribution:
New value = old value × (1 + monthly return) + your contribution.
The monthly return is your expected annual return ÷ 12. If you log an actual checkpoint, Steer re-anchors on that real value and projects forward from there instead of the estimate.
Withdrawing money
When you withdraw from an investment, Steer does two things at once: it lowers the investment's value by the amount you took out, and it adds that same amount as a one-off income in the investment's account. Your cash goes up, the investment goes down, and your portfolio value stays exactly the same — you've just moved money from one pocket to another. Undo a withdrawal and both sides reverse together.