Suggestion: Adding to option to assign unit value on production gods

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#1

I would like to see the option that when I am adding orders to my production line, I can assign what value each created unit will have after production. This would give the option for us player who calculate our productions cost can better keep track of the value of all units produced.

Say I produce 5 unit of FE, I could either leave an optional value field empty and the produced units will have a 0 value as it is now. Or I could assign say my own estimated unit cost, how I come up with that value is totally up to me, but that would help me keep track of the average value of my stock, since there is no distinction between produced items and bought. If I produce 5 units of FE, valuing them at 150/unit, and i buy 5 more units for 250/unit, than my new stock average would say 200/unit.

This minor addition I think would be a major quality of life improvement, because now I would not need a permanent spread sheet to keep track of my production cost and prices.

Does this suggestion sound too far fetched?

/Helter

#2

I wrote another post on this general topic, and the very short summary of my argument is that the current system creates an instant loss whenever you consume inputs in production. This does not make sense since just operating your business as expected should not generate an immediate loss. (My suggestion is to roll the input inventory value into the output, so that entering production orders has no immediate effect on profits).

Your suggestion of entering values would cause accounting issues - you are creating an arbitrary change in inventory value on the books, not related to other cash flows. If you increase the value of inventory by an amount X, you would create a jump in equity of X without any corresponding income statement entries, which would then be reversed when you sell that “overvalued” inventory.

For example, if you decided to add labour costs to your inventory value, you would get hit twice on the income statement (as it is now): you already have an expense for worker consumption, then the extra addition to carrying cost would decrease future profits when sold.

For what you want to do, you need to create a pro forma balance sheet and apply your own valuations to inventory. Much simpler to create your own spreadsheet.

#3

I’m not using any of the in-game accounting tools available at the moment, opened them once or twice but did not find them informative, probably just me not used too the tools.

As you say, it would be better if the value of the input items are transfered over to the produced output, produced units should have some other value than 0.

The accounting error you write about, would those only impact my number and game experience, or is there some exchange between users and their in-game accounting numbers?

In that case, instead och an official value that impacts the games accounting, it would be nice too have a ‘estimated value’ that you could assign to produced items, so too better keep track of profits margins during trading. At the moment I operate trade by trade, no larger scale or longer term planing.

Using a spreadsheet to calculate potential profits and cost for a certain production plan is very useful. item A from moria, item B and C from hortus, estimated file usage for the trades, worker cost for time producing, with all these parameter in consideration, the base value of my plan production would be X per unit. If I can sell above that, profit! As soon as that production is started, I don’t need the calculations any longer, i just need the final value. If I could add it to the produced units, i do not need to update a separate spreadsheet with all my trades and carafe stock value before i want to make a sale.

A spreadsheet should be a helpful tool and not a requirement to keep track of your profit margins.

#4

The player’s stability rating might be based on the calculated income.

If you just set the inventory values, you would break the game’s calculated income.

The only advantage you get is that you can look at the inventories to get what you think is the carrying. Since you probably need a spreadsheet to calculate the total cost of production, you already would have the information in a spreadsheet.

#5

But then I need to play from the same computer everytime, store the sheet in the cloud or carry around usb in case I what to play from somewhere else.

But the best would be that the produced value is the same as the input value, then you at least have a better correlation between production ins and outs.

#6

The accounting statements in-game are driven by simple rules. Creating an interface to allow users to create their own accounting systems would take a fair amount of development effort.

My suggestion is to replace one simple rule with another. Rolling other costs into inventory is more difficult. For example, worker consumption happens once a day. How can that be rolled into products that were already produced and sold?

To get what you want, they could possibly create a notes area where users can save reminder information.

#7

No I’m not saying they should integrate a new accounting system.

If I buy 10 FE for 50, the total stock value will be 500. If I then produce 10 more, the total value will be the same, so the value per unit has decreased by half. Basically the produced FE is free, which is not complete true since I bought and used resources to produce them. To keep it simple, the total value of the units produced should be at least the total value of the raw materials used. Let’s just keep labor costs over time and other parameters outside of this, those can be calculate in the backend but let’s just keep it simple.

If input material value was 100, then the 10 FE would have the same total value. Since the inventory does not separate produced and bought items, the total FE stock would be 20 units with a value of 600, 30 per unit instead of the 25 before.

So as i understood your original post, that replacing the 0 value with the input value would be a better solution and I agree with that.

As i understand how the built in accounting works, which i have a very limited understanding of, if i produce any item I get an automatik profit loss. I may be totally wrong in that assumption. I have also heard from other players the 0 value units in rare cases cause a negative value, not seen that myself.

If there is a separation or distinction between bought and produced units, then a notes field could work but that is a larger change in total.

In short, I think it would be better if the total value of the units produced (in a production cycle, not units previously produced or later in the queue) should be the total value of the units used (the input units used and there value at the time of production, so not changing with changes in my inventory over time) instead of zero. Total value of 100 in, total value of 100 out.

#8

Not saying inventory value should change over time in regards too dependencies, only saying that at the time of placing a order, the output and is set to either a user input value (i see a lot of problems with that if the user has no idea of what thay are doing) our the output value is based on the input units value.

Nothing should be rolled into previously produced items or old sales, that would just be strange and serve no purpose for further production and trade.

Feels like we are both are writing about the same thing but are missunderstanding the other explanation :slight_smile:

Actually, labor cost for a production are easy to calculate and add to the unit value. Based on you current inventory value of your consumables, the items used the by the workers in that production line per day, divide to get hourly usage and multiply with time for production, predicted production cost, add the final value at time of placed order or when production is started. Whatever happens during production is disregarded.

#9

The problem is that just changing one thing is not enough.

Under the current system, the destruction of inventory value matches exactly the inventory consumed expense which rises. The accounting still adds up. You have an expense which matches exactly the fall in your assets (inventory) and equity.

My suggestion is to roll the inventory so that inventory is unchanged - and the inventory expense remains unchanged. The accounting remains internally consistent, but to accomplish this, two things have to be done differently: the inventory value is different, and the expenses are different.

If the user specifies the inventory value, then another accounting entry has to change to balance that modification. By sticking a big value on inventories, you create large profits. This would look extremely strange, and possibly destroy the value of the income statement.

The objective of accounting is that you can look at the income statement and tell if a company has been profitable on a historical basis. It is not there to answer questions like “what is the all-in cost of production of a unit of LST?”

#10

Agree with your suggestion.

#11

Oh, don’t worry they are straight up useless for the most part, as someone who is an accountant the finance page of this game is painful to look at.

Actually, that’s not even that hard, when you produce product it takes a certain amount of time, so it really isn’t that hard for a backend system to track that especially since you can track all the prices of things that go into consumables, and the consumables are being consumed on the day after they are taken from your inventory, so for example, a 12 hour production cycle knows to take half of the consumable cost for that particular building on that particular day.

Honestly the devs need to rebuild the accounting system, but i don’t think it’s that high on their list since everyone uses their own sheets to track everything and can get more accurate information that way.

#12

They could run into corner cases with the consumables. What if a production line is unused for part of the day? Etc.

#13

That corner case is simple, consumables are consumed regardless of a building running, you did just lose consumables value during that time.

#14

This whole game is about accounting. Having only a cash accounting system is what I did when I had a paper route. It is critical. It should be advertised and promoted as a tool to teach corporate space based accounting. Corporate accountants should drool at this game since they are still using spreadsheets.