Income of every building is negative but I'm rolling in cash!?!?!?

[Oddible]

This game has some serious reporting issues and it appears I've found another one. Not sure why but literally EVERY SINGLE BUILDING has a negative income in the graph tab for the building. All of them! Factories, farms, taverns, bunkhouses, mines... each and every one. What is going on here. My revenue beats my expenses and I'm rolling in cash. How am I supposed to fine tune my economy if the reports are so borked!? What am I missing?

[Osok]

Because your export revenue (which in my games makes up nearly all of my income) is found at the docks, not at the buildings you mentioned.

(Individual buildings do show the value of their produced items under the statistic tab, but that's not a 1-to-1 comparison to what has gone into your treasury, since some of that has been exported, some hasn't and is sitting at the building it was produced at, and some may be consumed domestically.)

Though more to your point, if you want a report of overall revenue and expenses, check the almanac - that has a much clearer breakdown of what goes into and out of your treasury.

[Battleclown]

One of my textile mills has this statistic:

Income (lifetime) $-181,352
Income (last month) $-278
Production value (lifetime) $948,154
Production value (last month) $1,951

I don't know what the devs are thinking about those negative numbers :)

[City Builder]

Originally posted by Battleclown:

I don't know what the devs are thinking about those negative numbers :)

Maybe they were going for accounting 101. When I first started my career 35+ years ago it took me a while to wrap my head around how -100 could possibly be a credit.

Don't know, looking for an explanation too as it confuses me in T6

[jlking3rd]

I think the wording is just a bit odd. I am thinking that is the wages you have paid the workers, or THEIR income.

[iShadowLTu]

I'm confused as well. Was so nice to see individual building's profit over lifetime in previous games. Now everything shows negative income...

[Zuul]

I don’t own the game, I haven’t played the game....

With that said....

It sure appears that the income figures represent the operating costs. So you’ve spent 181,352 over the buildings lifetime to operate it. Meanwhile it has produced 948,154 worth of exportable goods during that same time period.

Assuming goods aren’t instantly sold and instead need to actually be exported, it makes sense to report it this way, as the building itself is not producing income unless the goods are exported.

However, assuming all the goods exported for the price listed, you have an actual profit of around 3/4 million from the textile mill.

[Osok]

Yeah, the "Income" statistic for stuff like industrial buildings should really read "Upkeep" or "Budget", since, if you look at your building's budget, you'll see that the "Income (Monthly)" statistic and the Monthly Budget you've allocated are equivalent. :)

The "Income (Lifetime)" is really just "Upkeep/Budget (Lifetime)" - so in Battleclown's case, his Textile Mill has produced a net value of $766,802 worth of cloth over its lifetime, and in the past month has produced a net value of $1,673.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Battleclown:

One of my textile mills has this statistic:

Income (lifetime) $-181,352
Income (last month) $-278
Production value (lifetime) $948,154
Production value (last month) $1,951

I don't know what the devs are thinking about those negative numbers :)

This building does not produce an income because no one pays money directly into the building

Taverns, hotels, etc places that actually have people pay them directly would have an income. This being a textile mill it's spending money on workers. That income lifetime is total budget and direct pay income, since the building makes no direct money it shows negative

On the other hand you've produced $948,154 worth of trade goods in production value.

Why is that not immediately counted as income? Because it's not income until it's moved to the docks and actually sold. Many things can effect this:

Teamsters can lose product on the way to the docks (depending on work mode), total cost of sales can go up or down depending on current export trade routes (with positive or negative effects)

It's really pretty obvious if you think about it

Production value isn't profit, it's potential profit and that potential can be lost or manipulated depending on how it's moved to the docks and what trade routes you take

Only buildings that are paid in directly will have positive income listed, production buildings have a production value, but you need to safely get that to a dock and export it for a profit

[GorilaSK]

I have a problem with that too. Regardless of whether it shows correct statistics or is a mistake, it is unclear and I do not know at all whether the building is profitable or not.

[Osok]

The simple answer to your question, GorilaSK, is as long as your building in question (factory, hotel, etc.) is not sitting idle for long periods of time (whether because of lack of inputs, or outputs being full), it's probably making a profit.

That said, the aforementioned Statistics tab (aside from the odd naming of the stats) makes it pretty clear whether it's making a (potential) profit or not - if the bottom numbers of production value are higher than the top numbers of "Income" - or rather, upkeep/budget/expenses - it's profitable (assuming you're exporting the value of those goods in the case of a production building). :)

Last but not least, yeah, a simple fix for the devs would be renaming that "Income" to "Upkeep" or "Expenses" or whatnot, since that's what it is.

[Hupailija]

But Osok then we would have even stranger situation where taverns, inns, shops and tourist things have negative upkeep or expenses ;)

Or it would have to be spread to 6 lines which would be even more confusing.

If anything it should be replaced with word: balance (of building)

[huddy_bear]

this, as with many other things in this game, make no sence and doesnt seem to work like it says it does, upgrades and techs are for the most part a hinderance in some way, trying to troubleshoot production lines is impossible, thers just no way to check if somthing is actually worth doing.

[Osok]

Aye, Hupailija, that could be easily remedied by just removing the negative (even by making the number negative in the code, to where negative+negative equals positive) but having a "Balance" figure per building is easier said than done in Tropico for building that produce exportable goods.

(And, more to the point, I'm not sure what the intense interest in building expenses is when - so long as the building is not idle for long periods of time - they tend to make plenty of money. From what I've seen, normal operation for factories, for example, produces about 5-10 times as much value as its upkeep - making upkeep more-or-less negligible.)

The far easier answer to anyone looking for detail on overall Treasury profit and loss is to go to the Alamanac, which gives a much clearer picture of what's going on and breaks everything down pretty darn well - especially if you click on subcategories to expand them for more detail. :)