| Hern | Thursday, March 10, 2022 - 03:04 am 
When a public company distributes money because of overfull coffers, the distribution is not actually given to the country in any respect.
Example: June 4669, the public company makes a $40B distribution. Its profit transfer is at 0%.
The country in which the company resides controls 85% of the shares.
The country has no stake in any other public company within the country.
The country receives $0 dividends for the months of May, June and July.
The profit paid by state owned corporations does not indicate any $40B increase for the month of June or July (it is only ~$20B on average.)
Unfortunately, I don't have any other stakes in the company to analyze if the $40B was split solely among the 15% investment funds (though that would be difficult anyways given lack of tools for investment fund accounting.) Still, even if that were the case, there's no real reason for that.
As far as I can tell, this money has outright disappeared. |
| neutralsc | Thursday, March 10, 2022 - 06:13 pm
I made the same observation. This bug only applies to country public owned, not enterprise public owned. |
| Hern | Thursday, March 10, 2022 - 06:45 pm
Agreed. Also, I can verify that investment funds do receive disbursements. This bug seems to only impact country treasuries. |
| Hern | Monday, April 11, 2022 - 11:29 pm
Has there been any news on this? |
| Andy | Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - 10:11 am
There is no difference between country owned public corps and other public owned corps.
the difference is in the share ownership.
in all cases of public corporations, dividends are paid to the share owners according to their share in the company.
In some cases the country is the largest share owner, in other cases it is a private share owner (CEO) or an investment fund.
We have not see any case proving anything else.
If you have encountered a problem and able to show how it goes wrong, we are very interested to see that and will of course fix ASAP.
It is probably not easily shown, but we need to see it. |
| Hern | Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - 04:47 pm
Corporation 4398004 on WG
Hesston Cattle Feed
It disbursed $40B in December of 4685. It's 90% controlled by the country, Medialis. So Medialis should have received $36B. But it received nothing.
 |
| Hern | Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - 04:53 pm
This problem isn't with dividends, it's cash surplus disbursements.
To be 100% clear, here's a couple more pictures.
Proof of disbursement
Proof of ownership
 |
| Andy | Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - 08:35 pm
I cannot follow these numbers.
don't see the financial page of the country.
there can be delays of a game month before numbers show up.
To see what happens, you need to show an example, with country name, world name, corporation etc.
We will login and check the numbers.
we can then also see the transactions on our logs, showing where amounts are going and where they pop up.
|
| Hern | Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - 08:45 pm
Hmm, okay, let me think of the simplest way to put it.
You have a public corporation. A country owns some portion, let's say 50%.
The corporation has a large amount of cash. There is a system where the corporation will distribute that excess cash to owners if it exceeds a certain amount. Let's say that limit is $140B.
The corporation hits that excess amount and thus sends money to all of its owners. Let's say that amount is $40B. So the corporation's cash goes down from $140B to $100B. That $40B goes to the owners.
The country, owning 50% of the corporation, should receive 50% of the $40B.
The country receives nothing. There is no cash received by the country.
Investment funds and enterprises are not affected - they receive the money just fine.
Take a look at the profit chart above for Medialis. There is no $30B blip anywhere. I understand the delays in the game, but this was 10 months ago. The country would have received the money by this point. |
| Hern | Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - 09:07 pm
You can still check that corporation and country.
WG - Medialis - Hesston Cattle Feed - December 4685 |
| Hern | Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - 09:16 pm
Here's another that just happened. Same things as above, just different corp.
WG - Medialis - Peoria Military Services - Sept/Oct 4686
Corporation Ownership
Funds are disbursed by corp
No extra money showed up
 |
| neutralsc | Thursday, April 14, 2022 - 01:48 pm
Hern, like I said, I made the same observation months ago. It only applies to country public controlled corporations. I understand Andy needs proof, but proofing that you did not receive cash transfer influx in a country, with this -not so optimal for browsing- cashflow statement is practically impossible. I did however check by then some multiple months due what Andy said, but I never saw the influx registered. |
| Hern | Thursday, April 14, 2022 - 04:04 pm
I know, he can easily see it with a simulated country and corporation, but he asked for proof. This is the best I can do. |
| Andy | Sunday, April 17, 2022 - 06:23 pm
I asked for proof because the process is not simple.
I was involved both in the development and the testing.
I believe in the concept and it proved to be correct.
now you say there is an error.
There might well be one, I personally fixed many. But then there must be some faulty transaction causing it and I need to see one, somewhere.
I explained on the other trail that the pricing fluctuations take place all the time with a huge number of transactions taking place.
Most data is probably visible in the transaction logs.
I am all for transparency. If I had more time and a smaller number of features waiting to be added, I would add more detailed logs.
|
| Hern | Monday, April 18, 2022 - 04:42 pm
But Andy, it doesn't show in the transaction log for the country. That's the problem!!! The money disappears!
We can't see where that money goes from the corporation page, maybe you can. |
| Hern | Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - 06:01 pm
Have you had any luck at investigating this Andy? It really discourages countries from making public corporations, since they lose out on so much of the profit. |
| Andy | Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - 06:53 pm
We did not see any errors yet.
Moreover, all countries we looked at that have a public corporations, have income from dividends.
I do not have a definitive response. |
| Andy | Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - 07:17 pm
Country listed public corporations have an item called"
"Profit payments paid"
They pay part of their profits.
who is receiving the money.
I country owned corporations, the owner gets the money.
the owner is the country.
In private corporations owned by an enterprise, the owner receives the money.
The owner is the enterprise. |
| Hern | Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - 10:22 pm
Andy, it's not the dividends, ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Those work, we know. We agree.
It's when the "Cash Available" inside of a corporation exceeds the arbitrary limit and the corporation gives out 20-40B to its owners to reduce its cash on hand. When that excess cash is paid out, countries do not receive anything when the corporation is public. That's the problem. |
| Hern | Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - 10:29 pm
Let me put it this way: if you turn profit sharing to 0% you will never EVER receive money from a public corporation as a country. EVER. Because when its cash on hand gets too high, paying out to the country is broken and that money just disappears. |
| Andy | Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - 10:56 pm
I understand.
I will check, but what we see is that public corporations have very high levels of cash.
other corporations move the cash to their owners.
Paying dividends reduces the cash in these corporations.
I am not sure about other cash movements in public corporations.
(accept for buying raw materials, and other cost of production, upgrades, salaries etc.)
I do not expect them to move any cash out, like they cannot get cash from the outside except for when they sell shares. |
| Andy | Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - 11:05 pm
Hern,
I checked some more and I see no cash movements out of public corporations.
and no cash into these corporations.
what makes you think there are such transfers.
If you see one, please send me the world name, country, name of the public corporation where there is money moving elsewhere.
|
| Andy | Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - 11:14 pm
We had requests in the past to make cash movements possible.
we argued against it because it implies we will force share owners to pay additional money into the corporations and for what exactly?
We said at the time that a corporation can issue new shares and sell them on the market to raise cash and also, they can purchase their own shares on the stock market, using any surplus cash they may have. |
| Andy | Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - 11:23 pm
I missed the point at the start of this discussion.
I thought it was about dividends because the only way for a public corporation to distribute cash is by paying dividends.
A public corporation never just make payments to shareowners.
it only pays dividends.
other corporations, state owned and privatly owned are moving cash to the owners when the cash level is too high.
this mechanism does not apply to public corporations. |
| Hern | Wednesday, May 4, 2022 - 05:12 pm
Please look at the graph I posted up above. It's a public corporation. It definitely made a 40B distribution. Same with the military services corp above. If they were buying supplies, it wouldn't affect the profit graphs that I showed. That only happens when it's a cash distribution.
I can verify that enterprises do receive this disbursement, as do country funds, it's only countries themselves that do not receive them.
I know that direct transfers are not possible, as it should be (that'd be crazy! haha) These are disbursements triggered by the system, not the player. |
| Andy | Thursday, May 5, 2022 - 12:08 am
I see the drop of cash.
Both cash distributions that are non existent for public corporations, and the purchasing of materials do not reduce the corporate profits.
Cash distributions in other types of corporations are not corporate cost like salaries. These cash payments reduce the assets of the company, like taxes do. They have nothing to do with profits/net profits.
The purchasing of materials does not even reduce the corporate assets.
There is nothing showing that the cash reduction is a cash distribution.
the only distribution of cash by a public corporations is the payment of dividends.
If it was a cash distribution, you would see a jump of cash in the country or enterprise that owns most of the shares.
The only mechanism we have to pay cash to the owners of a public corporation is dividends. There is no other way.
We explicitly programmed cash transfers to the owner, for state corporations and private corporations.
These corporations have an owner and cash can be moved, in or out.
we did not call them dividends because they go to one single owner.
There are more possible reasons for a large cash drop.
One is as I said before, the purchasing of raw materials.
Another is a change in tax percentages that can cause a back payment.
This can create a big difference between profit and net profit.
It can also happen because of a recalculation at the end of the year, concluding that not enough tax was paid.
Also by a sudden drop in sales during a single month due to lack of materials.
If you see any public corporation showing cash movements on its page, in or out, please let me know where you see it.
You will see that all these pages show cash movement fields as zero. |
| Hern | Thursday, May 5, 2022 - 06:20 am
Quote:Cash distributions in other types of corporations are not corporate cost like salaries. These cash payments reduce the assets of the company, like taxes do. They have nothing to do with profits/net profits.
This is wrong. While taxes are not paid on distributions, they do appear on the profit charts as I showed above.
Quote:the only distribution of cash by a public corporations is the payment of dividends.
Okay, this might show up as a "dividend" but it's still the corporation being forced by the simulation engine to reduce how much money is on hand. The assets drop too, an equal amount.
Quote:There are more possible reasons for a large cash drop.
None of those are the case.
Please Andy, can you just TEST this instead of arguing with me. I feel like that would save you some time. I assure you, it is broken. And surplus money distributions most definitely occur because the system forces them. |
| Andy | Thursday, May 5, 2022 - 09:19 am
There is no code ever written for cash distributions in public corporations other than dividends.
Cash distributions have nothing to do with profits, as I said before.
I understand you see changes in profits, but how do you know that these changes have anything to do with dividends.
they do not.
If you want to understand large fluctuations in cash, you need to look at many other numbers on the same month.
these include raw materials, dividends, taxes and more.
you show a graph of profits and net profits and nothing more.
If you have an example that shows this again, please let me know, exactly where it is, and I will look at the numbers and tell you where the cash went to.
There is nothing in what you show, that deals with taxes, and back taxes as I explained and again:
dividends and cash distributions, in Simcountry and the real world, are done after the profit is computed. |
| Hern | Thursday, May 5, 2022 - 04:54 pm
Quote:There is no code ever written for cash distributions in public corporations other than dividends.
Then explain this.
WG - Majorette Zinc - corp ID 6251022
 |
| Andy | Thursday, May 5, 2022 - 07:53 pm
This time we were on time to check the details.
The amount of 30B is dividend.
Most of it went to the enterprises itself because it is the owner of around 85% of the shares.
the rest went to four investment funds in different countries.
The amount was just less than 4 B.
The enterprise shows a dividend income from public corporations.
the amount is around 40 B each month.
Not all enterprises pay dividends each month.
only a very small number and the amount depends on the number of shares owned.
That month, the enterprise received 25.377.842.176 as we could see on the log.
Even now, you did not show enough data. the dividend payment was showing in the enterprise.
This of course explained the positive profit and the negative net profit.
The dividends do not influence the corporate profits, only the net profit which is profit, less dividends and less taxes. |
| Hern | Thursday, May 5, 2022 - 09:05 pm
Okay! Yes! I agree with everything you said.
This doesn't work if a country owns shares. This part here:
Quote:That month, the enterprise received 25.377.842.176 as we could see on the log.
doesn't happen for a country. A country receives nothing for these special dividends. Also, I don't believe that amount is included in the "Income from Dividend from Public Corporations" line item. Maybe it shows up in "Cash Transfers"? I don't know as that line item has no history graph. The amount of dividends my enterprise receives is fairly stable and does not show the 25B$ blip we just saw. Here's the chart:
But the enterprise still receives the funds, I have verified that happens. Countries do not receive the funds.
There's no cash log for an enterprise, so I couldn't show that part. |
| Hern | Thursday, May 5, 2022 - 09:06 pm
 |
| Hern | Thursday, May 5, 2022 - 09:44 pm
Hesston Cattle Feed - corp ID 4398004
Did the same 30B$ dividend in Feb/Mar of 4697
See if you see the money there - it's primarily owned by the country. |
| Hern | Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - 06:12 pm
Hesston Cattle Feed - corp ID 4398004
This corporation will make another payment soon (Nov 4700 or Dec 4700)
I recommend watching it. |
| Andy | Thursday, May 12, 2022 - 10:48 am
Good for you.
Huge dividend payments. |
| Hern | Thursday, May 12, 2022 - 04:14 pm
Andy, it's broken for COUNTRIES. You looked at an enterprise.
Don't be an asshole now considering it's take 20+ posts from me and SOMEHOW YOU STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND. |
| Hern | Thursday, May 12, 2022 - 04:16 pm
Quote:I made the same observation. This bug only applies to country public owned, not enterprise public owned.
Quote:Agreed. Also, I can verify that investment funds do receive disbursements. This bug seems to only impact country treasuries.
Literally in the first three posts.
What is so difficult about this. I'm tempted to just stop playing given that response. I can't believe how difficult this is.
I'm not the only person reporting this, lest you forget.
I showed you an enterprise owned because we couldn't stop arguing about what this stupid distribution is even CALLED. I didn't realize you would completely forget and block out the initial point of the post which is NOT ABOUT ENTERPRISE OWNED. |
| Andy | Friday, May 13, 2022 - 01:09 pm
Hern,
You are here for several months and you find more errors than many experiences players in a very long time.
I am not saying that there are no errors.
There are errors in Simcountry and we are very very happy when someone finds one and we can correct it.
You show us some graphs from the corporation.
Corporations can have many more reasons to have their cash changed.
The most probable one is cash exchange with the country and in this case dividends to the owners. I have no idea who the share owners are in this case. The only graph showing dividends shows a dividend of >40 B
You do not show all the values of the country. not even all the values of the corporation.
experienced players did not find any error in the cash of corporations for years.
The previous discussion was about cash in public corporations in an enterprise and there was no error.
products not offered because of a rounding problem, again a player started language that was outrageous and completely exploded over it.
Now you are threatening to leave because of another detail which might be difficult to understand?
there is no error shown in what you are showing here.
If this was an error, and cash changes happen all the time, many experiences players would be here with you and all giving us the exact place where it happened so we can go and look for it.
this never happened.
so if you see this again, please give us all the data.
WORLD, COUNTRY, CORPORATION and we will have a look and explain to you what happened.
no graphs because they prove nothing.
Fully understanding corporate finance and country finance requires some experience, good looking and not jumping to conclusions.
It is not trivial but don't be quick to conclude that there is an error.
and believe me, we love errors because we can then correct them.
The outrage about the one ton of Plutonium that was not offered on the market resulted (in the last upgrade), in these values being printed with fractions.
Now it is easy to see that it was not 1 but a fraction >0.5
It was not an error but we improved the page anyway. |
| Hern | Friday, May 13, 2022 - 04:00 pm
I wasn't talking about quitting because of this issue, I found this very rude
Quote:Good for you.
Huge dividend payments.
It completely minimizes the work I've been doing to bug fix your game, and it's wrong, because I don't get the dividend. Because it's broken.
I can't speak to other people finding these issues, that's on them. Maybe it's a newer issue, I couldn't tell you. I tried simcountry over the years but never cared as much as now, so I didn't track these kinds of numbers.
This is a very specific circumstance and only noticeable if you pay close attention or if your country has many public corporations and your profit sharing/tax are low. You would lose all your money because the dividend disappears.
I also deliberately avoid country-owned public corporations because of this bug, so my resources are limited in showing you what is wrong.
I don't know how far back your logs go, I've been trying to give you corporations but it always seems to be too far in the past by the time you check.
Currently here's a list of country owned that have generated these large dividends. I only play on WG.
Medialis - Hesston Cattle Feed - corp 4398004 - Dec/Jan 4701 - 40B
Medialis - Peoria Military Services - corp 4398014 - Jan/Feb 4701 - 30B
Let me know if that is too old for you, I'll adjust some corporations specifically for this bug and tell you in the future (but seriously, why can't you just test this very quickly yourself by generating a large dividend on a test corporation?) |
| Andy | Saturday, May 14, 2022 - 05:57 pm
It is 14 months back.
too far to see all transactions in details.
if you have a new one, please let me know.
the way public corporations are processed in exactly the same for enterprise owned ones and country owned ones.
the only difference is in the list of share owners.
In enterprise owned public corporations, the largest (non fund) shareowner is an enterprise.
In country owned ones, the largest (non fund ) share owner is a country.
The enterprise distributes the dividend to its share owners.
the dividend per share is computed by the total dividend amount divided by the number of shares the corporation issued.
then computed for each share owner depending on their holdings.
Dividends are in fact paid when the public corporations reach a certain cash amount. |
| Hern | Saturday, May 14, 2022 - 09:58 pm
Quote:the only difference is in the list of share owners.
In enterprise owned public corporations, the largest (non fund) shareowner is an enterprise.
In country owned ones, the largest (non fund ) share owner is a country.
Right, but for some reason countries never receive the money, while enterprises (and investment funds) do.
I'll have another one tomorrow, I think. |
| Anihana | Monday, May 16, 2022 - 03:23 am
Hern maybe try going to the finance menu. Profit and loss page. Income from dividend should have the information your after. |
| Hern | Monday, May 16, 2022 - 04:24 pm
Anihana, nothing shows up there from these payments.
Andy, WG - Medialis - Hesston Cattle Feed - 4398004 just happened in April 4703. |
| Andy | Wednesday, May 18, 2022 - 07:08 pm
I have the data.
I will save it here to make sure it does not disappear and have an engineer look into it.
The corporations is 90% owned by the state and might be considered financially a state corporations.
In any case, the numbers are not transparent and it is difficult to quickly see what happens.
I will be out of the country for 12 days.
will be on line during that period and check the forum, but the session with an engineer will be when I am back.
We will however find out. |
