At last I've got some firm figures to show what's happening in my game. They are for Liam's "Anything Goes" nightclub in my island 'hood. As the name suggests, it's a rather adult themed small private nightclub. Basically the club earns money in two ways. The admission charge by bandatron machine is §7 per hour. There is also hacked chair from our sister site where Sims are charged §80 a time for private "exotic" dances. The clientele is predominantly gay. Liam has 3 employees: Aidan, his housemate and boyfriend is employed mainly as DJ. (Aidan has 9 creative points.) George and Justin are employed as dancers. Aidan is a family member, but a couple of Squinge hacks let Liam employ him.

Anyway, I sent 3 Sims, the Harrison bothers and their live-in friend Jimmy, on a "just for fun" outing to the club. I noted the funds in both Liam's and the Harrisons' households before the visit. The Harrison party spent §382 at the club, but §75 of this was for energy drinks from a slot machine that doesn't earn money for Liam, leaving §307 spent that would go to Liam. §160 of this was for 2 private dances, meaning §147 for admission charges (3 Sims each paying §7 an hour for 7 hours).

I made up a spreadsheet to calculate the likely profit (or loss) that the club would make during their visit, based on the number of paying customers in the club, and the number of private dances paid for:

There was quite a turnover of customers, but whenever I looked there were always at least 7 or 8 in the club. So for a rough (and conservative) estimate, I calculated for 7 paying visitors for 7 hours. I saw at least 6 private dances; there may have been 7. That gave an estimated income of §823 for the night.

Wages are the only expenditure, and the wage bill for the night (by this estimate) would be §581, leaving a net profit of §242. However, as Aidan is a family member, his wages are a zero sum gain for the family. They are a cost to Liam, but not to the family. (In effect they're Aidan's share of the night's profit.) So the profit to the household should be (about) §536.

However in reality the family cash was down by §328. Now that equates exactly to George's and Justin's wages for 8 hours. That makes sense as Liam had to start paying his staff immediately, but my visiting Sims took a few minutes before they all signed in at the bandatron ticket machine, and therefore only paid for 7 hours.

So my game correctly calculated the expenditure side of the profit and loss account, but completely failed to process the income side. If I use the FamilyFunds cheat to credit them with the night's gross income (§823 by this calculation) that will leave them roughly where they would have been if everything had worked properly.

Well, I'd still prefer a proper fix, but I can live with it if I can calculate how much to reimburse them.

Now I'll have to go to Veronaville and do the same sort of test with a retail business. Then I can see if it's the same as fruitsymphony, or if it's slightly different in my game. It's potentially worse in retail, especially in high-volume, low margin business.

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I am fascinated to understand who has these problems, and who doesn't. I get them with only NL and OFB, and a moderate amount of CC. fruitsymphony gets them with all EPs and no CC at all, but Jo apparently doesn't get them with all EPs and a load of CC.

I wonder if Jo has something in her cc that affects this?

You don't need the program, you just need to edit the CSV file in Excel or Open Office, then you can import it into Sims2DB as usual.

I did some experimenting today with a family that owns a venue business. Expenses at the business are very low -- basically, the only expense is when someone takes a bag of chips out of the mini fridge. Lisa is the official business owner, but her husband Glen is allowed to conduct business as well, since they are married. Here is what happened.



Does this help anyone? What am I overlooking? What should I test next, if anything?

EDIT: Spoilered for length. Pics available upon request.

I always thought actual money to a business only occurred when you play as the owner. I always thought going as a visitor gave no money to the owner because in real terms the owner isn't really working his business. Things are also automatically restocked remember. If Tom goes to Jack's grocery store and buys all the eggplants and goes home, he has eggplants to juice, but the shop however is not out of eggplants because you can send Sally to the shop and she can also buy all the eggplants. I mentioned this resetting on another thread. So they are in affect not buying the 'real' goods'. The owner neither makes or looses money because when the owner arrives his or her shop should be exactly as they left it even if Tom or Sally went and bought every thing off every shelf.
Tom and Sally effectively had the game make them some eggplant ghosts. This is what i meant when I said businesses work for me. I don't loose money but I also don't expect the cash flow of my playable to alter when I visit the store with another sim. Different matter again if you are playing the owner and your goods or ticket machine is not giving you money.

Auto restock sign <-- Maybe this would work for clothes shops.
You can set it to restock for free.

In my case, the owner actually LOSES money, and that's the problem.

Oh useful thanks - I was thinking though of updating the programme to take in more data from the later EPs which is why I was thinking of buying the software.

The trouble in my game (and the same thing seems to be true for fruitsymphony and vattuflickan) is that it's not the same. All the operating costs of running the business while other Sims were visiting (wages and restocking) have been deducted from the owner's funds, but he/she hasn't received any of the money that the customers spent. The cash flow has altered, but always and only on the expenditure side. I can't just ignore it as PlatinumPlumbbob suggests -- that way lies financial ruin for all my business owners.

In the example I gave above, Liam had the cost of the wages he paid to George and Justin (his dancers) deducted from his cash, but he received none if the money that my Sims and the other customers spent. (Aidan's wages weren't deducted, or, if you prefer, they were deducted and then credited back to the family, which is correct since he's a family member.)

If Tom and Sally went to Scott Moore's shop in my game and bought everything in it, they'd bankrupt him. He'd receive nothing from them in payment, and he couldn't afford to restock all the stuff they'd taken. It would be like having your struggling corner shop done over by a team of professional shoplifters!

I had thought (and hoped) that OFB might work like double entry bookkeeping, so that every Simoleon debited from one family's account would be credited to another's. And I could live with it if sending other Sims to their businesses didn't affect their finances at all (which I think is what Jo is describing). But my business Sims can't survive having to meet all the expenditure but not getting any of the income. I have to intervene to keep them solvent!

Yes Andrew that is what I am describing, going as a visitor should not change the finances of the owner at all, and all stock should still be there when you play as the owner.
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I'm wondering does everyone with this issue have the same set up? I have all individual disks.

And employees who live in other households get paid their wages for time spent in the business when the owner's not playing - not just the wages they receive when they go off to the business as to a rabbit hole, but all the hours they spent while third parties visited. Employees and owners earn badges when the owner's house isn't being played. And a sim can sell out of produce and not be able to restock it. So I don't understand why the owner profits are the only ones that don't get credited properly. It seems likely that there's one line of code that's broken.

I haven't worried about it to date because you can make up the losses, in the early days, with a combination of working the lot hard during the business owner's day - don't call in employees, and use family members to not only get the work done, but to open the store for more than one shift - and taking cash perks as you gain stars. The really big profits are in the cash perks.

It's also important, for retail businesses, to be fully stocked at the end of the business owner's day; otherwise, when sims visit, he'll be hemorrhaging money as he ignores the register to go around restocking and getting charged for merchandise that will still be gone next time anyone visits.

I will be keeping an eye once I start playing my new hood on my Sims amount of money (never did before and never played long enough to notice anything if it wasn't working right) as several of them are ment to make a living with their business. Besides the cash perks I also like (for retail businesses anyway doesn't work for all kinds of businesses) the wholesale discount, as that also helps generate more profit over time.