> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.go.aiinsurance.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Reference Frames
> Flow frame and type frame — how a figure gets its sign when it leaves the app
A financial figure is one fact: an amount of money that moved, or is expected to
move, in one direction. But there is more than one correct way to *write that
fact down*. A **reference frame** is the convention that decides which.
Financials has two.
Signed by **which way the money actually flows**. Money in is positive, money
out is negative. A \$10,000 loss payment is `-10000`; a \$3,000 recovery is
`3000`.
Signed by **whether the money went the way its Invoice Type expects**.
Positive in the expected direction. A \$10,000 loss on a loss type is
`10000`; a \$3,000 recovery on a recovery type is also `3000`. A figure
running *against* what the type expects is the negative one here.
Both describe the same money. They disagree only about which side of zero it
sits on.
## When to Use Each Frame
**Flow frame** answers "what happened to cash?" A summed column gives the net
effect on the business. Losses and recoveries offset each other, which is
usually what a finance team wants from a spreadsheet.
**Type frame** answers "how big was this?" A claim's costs read as positive
numbers, which is how most loss runs, bordereaux, and reports to carriers are
conventionally presented. A summed column gives total incurred, not a net.
Neither is more correct. The right choice depends on who is reading the file.
## On Screen the Frame Is Carried by Color
Every screen in Financials reads the **flow frame**, and expresses it with color
instead of a sign:
* Green — money coming
in, where the flow frame would write a positive number.
* **Black** — money going out, where the flow frame would write a negative one.
* **`$0`, uncolored** — a real zero. There is no flow to ink.
In the live event above, the black ALAE, Indemnity, Coverage Expense, and
claim-cost figures are unsigned magnitudes of money leaving the business. The
green **Deductible** is money coming in, and the green `$49,750` owed total is the
net result after that incoming recovery offsets the outstanding outgoing amounts.
The screen never needs a minus sign: color carries the flow frame while the
number stays positive.
So every figure on screen is an unsigned magnitude, and the frame setting changes
nothing about how it looks. Choosing a frame only matters where a figure leaves
the app and a sign has to do the work the color was doing.
A zero is not the same as a missing value. A settled line, a cleared reserve, or
a type with no activity yet shows `$0`. A genuinely absent value — no date, no
payee — shows an em dash.
## Where a Frame Applies
Five surfaces write figures out of the app. Each one carries a frame.
| Surface | What it is |
| ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Invoices** | Amount columns in the [Company Event Financials invoice-list export](/financials/pages/event-financials-page#exporting-invoices) |
| **Overview** | Figures in the loss & operating report export |
| **Reserve Update** | The Reserve and Adj columns in the reserve listing export |
| **Event Export** | The financial columns on an entity's spreadsheet export |
| **Smart Tags** | Financial values substituted into generated documents |
**Everything defaults to the flow frame.** A company that changes nothing gets
flow-framed signs on every export and every generated document.
## Choosing a Frame
Under **Admin → Financials Configuration → Reporting**, each of the five exports
has its own **Flow / Type** toggle. See [Reporting](/financials/pages/reporting)
for that configuration surface. The setting is **company-wide per export**: one
choice that every Invoice Type follows, including types created later.
The Reporting page names the exact export surface beside each toggle, so a
change can be scoped to invoice exports, Overview exports, reserve updates,
event exports, or smart tags without changing how figures appear on screen.
Below the toggles, an **Invoice type overrides** switch turns on a list of
deviations — one row naming an Invoice Type, an export, and the frame it takes
instead.
* **Two exports cannot be overridden.** **Invoices** and **Overview** have amount
columns that add up *across* Invoice Types, so a document mixing frames within
one of them would produce a column that sums to nothing meaningful. Both appear
in the override picker disabled, with that reason on hover, rather than hidden.
* **Flipping a company-wide export to Type warns.** In the type frame every figure
is positive in its own type's expected direction, so the sign stops
distinguishing money in from money out — which on a column that nets is the
sign's whole job.
* **A Reserve Update override on an Operating type has nothing to describe** and is
dropped: an Operating type holds no reserves.
* **Only signs change.** Which figures exist, which rows they sit on, and which
cells are blank are all unaffected. Zeros stay real zeros.
* **Two exports set differently will disagree, on purpose.** A smart tag in the
type frame prints `$6,000.00` where the flow-framed event export prints `-6000`.
They agree to the cent whenever both are on the same frame — which is the
default.
## Worked Example
An event with two Invoice Types. **Indemnity** expects money out: \$10,000
expected, \$4,000 paid. **Subrogation** expects money in: \$3,000 expected,
\$1,000 collected.
| Figure | On screen | Flow frame | Type frame |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------- | ---------- |
| Indemnity — Reserves | 6,000.00 in **black** | `-6000` | `6000` |
| Indemnity — Paid | 4,000.00 in **black** | `-4000` | `4000` |
| Indemnity — Total | 10,000.00 in **black** | `-10000` | `10000` |
| Subrogation — Reserves | 2,000.00 in green | `2000` | `2000` |
| Subrogation — Paid | 1,000.00 in green | `1000` | `1000` |
| Subrogation — Total | 3,000.00 in green | `3000` | `3000` |
Subrogation is unaffected. Its money flows *in*, which is also what its type
expects, so both frames agree. The frames only diverge on types whose expected
direction is money out.
In every frame, `Reserves + Paid = Total` holds with signs intact — for
Indemnity, `(-6000) + (-4000) = -10000` in the flow frame and
`6000 + 4000 = 10000` in the type frame. The three figures are always on the same
side, so a row never sums to zero by accident.