So I've never had much success checking in with my off-lot businesses, as they tend to barely make any money even when the owner is there so they never generate anything after checking in either. Today, though, I redeemed the 50k cash reward with business perks whilst on a business lot, and to my surprise, it was added to the business' daily earnings - great, I thought! That'll make some unfair returns over the next few days...

Next day my sim checks in, and at midnight I get a message that the cafe has sent in a grand total of 710.

710?!

I originally thought it must have been a CC bug, so I've been testing in a CC free game. This time, Cheeco Ramirez made 90k - checked in, and that evening he got 3k. wtf?! Since when are the returns on businesses so insanely low?

I could be very, very wrong, but I always thought that the returns you get when checking in rather than actively running the business are based on a (diminishing) percentage of the business's total value, not on the average profit that it makes when actively running the store. It's been a long time since I've had a business with a manager as I usually don't allow my business owners to have employees (I'm mean), but I recall thinking that that was what it must be back when I did have employees/managers. The thing I was unsure of is how the game calculates what a business is worth. But like I said, I could be totally wrong.

Well, now I'm really confused! I decided to test your theory on three Bluewater businesses:

The furniture shop got:
Last revenue - §84,119
Business value - §30,000
Lot value - §90,941
Remote income - §3,523

The Electronics Superstore got:
Last revenue - §36,505
Business value - §10,000
Lot value - §64,699
Remote income - §5,587

And Club Dante got:
Last revenue - §50,160
Business value - §15,000
Lot value - §89,299
Remote income - §12,782

If there's a correlation there, I can't see it!

HAH! Well, it's obviously not the last revenue generated because in the above examples, the ones that had the best remote income were the ones that had the lower last revenues.

I'm now wondering if it's something like the business and/or lot value plus or minus an amount based on the business's level? I mean, it would make sense if higher-level businesses with more customer loyalty generated more income than lower-level ones.

I have never used a manager since the first time I tried it. I decided that 'feature' was rubbish and never bothered with it again. If your sims are stinking rich it might have some merit but I wouldn't bother with it, unless it's been modded which is quite possible.

Well, I use them so my owned business lots can function more like community lots. I want all my businesses to be on community lots so my playables can visit them and buy the stuff they need; but I also want them to be owned so the money isn't just vanishing into thin air. I don't want the owners to be there all the time, because that leads to my playables wandering in and pissing away their funds on stuff they don't need, which I then have to sell next time I get to them in the rotation.

I use them in exactly the same way, so that the neighborhood can be as "self-sufficient" as possible, without money appearing and disappearing magically. So it used to bug be that playables would show up and buy stuff they don't need. However, there is a fix for that. I BELIEVE it makes it so that while playables will still visit owned lots and shop and buy, they don't actually buy and the (sometimes useless) stuff doesn't clog up their inventories and their household funds don't deplete. I can't remember who made it or what it's called, but I'll dig through my hack folder and see if anything leaps out at me.

BRB...maybe...

ETA: Nope, didn't find anything on this machine. I probably didn't put it on here because I'm not using community lots much in the game on this underpowered machine, due to long loading times. But I know it's on my desktop at home, and I know it works. I want to say that it's Cyjon's, but don't quote me on that...

Son of ETA: Ah-HAH! Found it! It's Paladin's. It's on the Fixes page at simwardrobe.com. Follow the OFB link, and it's "Customers Leave After Purchase," "Playables Don't Go Broke" version. Now I feel better, because that was going to bug me!

I'd look into mods.
There are some here http://www.insimenator.org/index.php?topic=108852.0 with one related to phoning in. I don't think that was your issue though.

I did look at mods - found the code which calculates the payout (it actually averages hourly earnings over the past 5 sessions and then gives you average per hour * 8 hours per day for checking in, plus the decay stuff), modified it after a lot of hair-pulling trying to find something which can modify it as it's a LUA and not a BHAV, and no-go - the payout stays the same. I'm trying to replace the whole LUA with a BHAV now, but can't work out what all the Locals are.