The portfolio cash-flow schedule lists every coupon and redemption the gilts in a portfolio have left, dated to the day it is paid and projected to final maturity, so the money a portfolio will receive can be read before it arrives.
What the schedule is
The portfolio cash-flow analysis takes the gilts held in a portfolio and lists every payment they have left to make: each coupon on the date it falls, and the £100 returned when each gilt matures. It is not a valuation and not a single figure; it is a schedule, a set of dated amounts, projected from the trades booked to the gilts' final maturity. Everything on it is cash the portfolio is due to receive, marked to the day it is due.
A dated cash flow, defined
A dated cash flow is a payment with a date and a kind. The date comes from the gilt's own coupon schedule or its redemption date; the kind is either a coupon or a principal repayment; the amount is what that payment is worth on that date. The table below shows the shape with three illustrative rows, which are not from any gilt or report: one holding, one coupon, and its redemption.
| Payment date | Holding | Flow kind | Amount |
| 2026-11-15 | A | Coupon | £2,000 |
| 2027-05-15 | A | Coupon | £2,000 |
| 2028-05-15 | A | Redemption | £100,000 |
Two things about a dated cash flow are worth holding on to. The coupon is a fixed contractual amount for a conventional gilt, so it lands on its date without any input from you; the redemption is the £100 per unit returned at maturity. For an index-linked gilt both are uplifted by the gilt's index ratio, which makes the coupon and the redemption estimates for any payment whose index value has not yet been published.
How holdings and periods line up
The schema can be read two ways, and both describe the same dated flows. Grouped by period, it totals the payments falling in each tax year, calendar year or month into a column, which is the view to use for seeing the shape of the cash through time. Pivoted the other way, it puts one row per gilt and one column per period, so a single gilt's payments read straight across and its redemption year is a column you can find at a glance. The pivot is the way to check that two holdings do not both return their principal in the same year; the grouped view is the way to total a year's income and capital.
The three flow kinds
Every payment on the schedule is one of three readings, selected by the flow control, and the difference between them is what makes the schedule legible.
- Income is the coupon paid on a holding — savings income, taxed in the year of the payment date.
- Capital is the principal returned at redemption — for a gilt, not a taxable gain, so it is never netted.
- Total is income and capital together, the cash received but not a taxable figure on its own.
- A period that carries no flow of a given kind shows an em dash rather than a zero, so a redemption year and a coupon-only year are told apart.
The projection basis and its limits
For a conventional gilt the amounts are fixed and the schedule is contractual: the coupon and the principal will arrive as shown, however the market moves in between. For an index-linked gilt every flow is uplifted by the latest published index ratio with RPI held flat, so the figures are the nominal cash you would receive if the index stopped rising from its last published value — an estimate, and one marked as such. The further out a payment is, the more a later rise in the index would lift it, so an index-linked schedule is a floor built on the latest published ratio rather than a forecast.
A single gilt's own cash-flow page, reached from the conventional gilts list, carries the same flows per £100 nominal for that one gilt, with the accrued interest at each payment date and the discounting columns — an NPV at the gilt's gross redemption yield and an NPV (par curve) at the report's fitted curve. The portfolio schedule totals the actual nominal amounts; the per-gilt page is where the same flows are discounted and shown per £100.
What the schedule feeds
The dated flows are the raw material for more than one figure. Read by tax year, they are the income and capital that fall into each return. Taken as the actual cash in and out of a portfolio, together with the closing market value, they are what the IRR since inception is computed over — the annualised, money-weighted rate across every flow. And the schedule is a planning aid: it shows the years a portfolio's money is due, which is the question a cash-flow schedule answers and a valuation does not.
Background, not advice
This is a reference to the portfolio cash-flow schedule and what each dated amount on it represents; it is general background, not investment, tax or legal advice for any reader's circumstances. The figures above are illustrative, and a real schedule is projected from the trades booked in the portfolio and the gilt report it is marked at. An index-linked flow is an estimate built on the latest index ratio, and every projected payment is only as reliable as the index value it rests on.