#Tracking Revenue and Expenses

[xplorediiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii]

Starting a new business venture is an exhilarating journey, but it’s crucial to lay a strong financial foundation from the outset. This begins with understanding the fundamentals of startup accounting.

[artisticdivasworld]

The Power of Data Analysis and Integration for Your Business: Why You Need to Start Now

To keep your trucking business financially healthy, it’s crucial to track revenue and expenses accurately. Data analysis helps you monitor income from various brokers and customers, and keep a close eye on every cent of your expenses. By integrating financial data from multiple sources, you get a clear picture of your cash flow, enabling you to make smart decisions. We touched on this topic once…

[moolamore]

From Startup to Success: How Moolamore Cash Flow Forecasting Can Boost Your Business

Wishing you could predict cash flow fluctuations with remarkable accuracy and make brilliant decisions to propel your SME company to unprecedented success?

Say goodbye to all your worries! There is a solution on the way! Enter the revolutionary Moolamore cash flow tool into the picture! Join us on this journey from startup to success as we discover how Moolamore can improve your financial management and decision-making processes! Make sure to read this blog to the end!

[gwgaccountant]

The stereotype of a Bad Tax Client is probably the self-employed individual who brings you a bag of loose receipts. Now, those can be frustrating, but I find the ones who just hand you a bank/credit card statement to be so much worse.

It's usually safe to assume that any receipt the client stuffed in their bag is relevant, and easy to figure out why they made that business transaction. There's an itemized list of everything cash was spent on, after all! (And a lot of the receipt folks stick different categories of receipt into different bags.) It's just data entry.

Bank statements, though? You have to squint at the business name, maybe do some googling, and then guess why the business owner might have spent money there. Was he renting the space? Buying tickets? Purchasing an unusually large quantity of merchandise? Was it actually a business transaction at all, or did the client put personal purchases on a business credit card?

[jpbradley]

Which Primarchs committed tax fraud?

Lorgar claimed tax exempt status as a church. Cited a law from the Age of Strife, rejected after lengthy legal proceedings. Definitely did not instigate the Heresy to avoid paying his substantial fines.

Sanguinius filled his form wrong. He managed to charm the investigating officer into allowing him to resubmit, but failed to file on the ground that he was murdered by Horus. A small percentage of Blood Angels are, to this day, afflicted with anxiety over an unfiled return.

Roboute Guilliman 100% knows how to commit tax fraud, and how to get away with it. Of course he does. He's the tax man (Ultramar regional office). Hates Magnus for reasons we'll get to.

Jaghatai Khan neither knows nor cares what taxes are. The Imperial Revenue took years to track down his address, and after several final demands an investigator visited only to find a lone postbox 300 miles from anywhere, half buried in unopened mail.

Perturabo failed to declare assets 'inherited' from Ferrus Manus and is currently awaiting a trial date.

Ferrus Manus has been given dispensation to defer his return for the tax year on the following grounds:

Being dead.

Lion El'Johnson swears he knows how to commit tax fraud but simply never would. He's lying. He has no idea but would rather walk naked into the Warp than admit it.

Vulkan keeps fastidious notes through the year which makes him very popular with his accountants. They try to convince him to expense his Drakeskin cloaks but he refuses as he wears them recreationally (despite the Salamander's 'business logo') and doesn't want to get into trouble.

Fulgrim completed his return, he really did, but it wasn't right. Currently on his cogitator is 'Tax Return 3 FINAL (FINAL!!).tax' unsent.

Leman Russ vaguely understands that tax is a thing. Thus far nobody can decide if the Space Wolves mix of raucous hospitality and space Viking intimidation towards investigators is a concerted effort to avoid paying or if they're just like that.

Magnus has all the documentation to prove that he's paid. It's all right there. It makes absolutely no sense and somehow he's owed money? Guilliman is convinced he's full of it but hasn't been able to prove it and is quietly seething.

Rogal Dorn pays in full and fully hates anyone who doesn't. He grumbles about it to anyone who will listen, usually within earshot of anyone he suspects isn't paying his way. Magnus & Conrad vocally agree with him. Guilliman leaves the room before he says something he'll regret.

Alpharius definitely submitted a return. Nothing about it looks right, all the numbers are estimates, all the assets are in some kind of code but somehow it's already been stamped as accepted.

Konrad Curze also vocally hates anyone who doesn't pay up. Secretly he hasn't paid in years. He is beyond the pretty laws of 'taxes' and with everyone focused on Lorgar, Perturabo and Magnus he's just slipped through the cracks, which he has taken as a silent endorsement.

Corvus Corax wants to pay tax. He’s tried to pay tax. He’s sent several returns to the Imperial Revenue and still they haven’t taken the money. He’s beginning to get worried. He needn’t be. They have quite simply forgotten he exists and it's gone on too long for them to admit their mistake.

Mortarion pays but hates everything about it. He thinks it's a personal slight and is convinced he is paying more than everyone else. He's right. This makes his whining no less annoying.

Angron had taxes explained to him once and ol' Rusty's sacrifice is why Imperial Revenue officers can wear jeans on Fridays. Since then the IR has practiced a bold 'hands off' approach with the World Eaters, proving that violence is sometimes an answer.

Horus absolutely pays his taxes. In Horusbux: A currency of his own devising. Lorgar attempted to trick Horus into a ponzi scheme, now all of his money is in Horusbux and he has no idea how it happened. Horus keeps on promising everyone massive returns, usually from the deck of his waryacht, the Live Forever II.

[onestepbackwards]

I've been following the Unity situation and its so fucking insane like holy shit. We have everything! - Absurd fees for devs! That may or may not be retroactive and illegal, but we won't say until you cause a stink about it! (We totally aren't shh we wouldn't break the law. Totally :) ) - Getting rid of one of their levels of subscriptions during all of this, The 'Plus Plan', and allegedly putting you on the more expensive 'Pro' subscription if you auto renew! - Insider trading! Selling their stocks not even a week before they released this new change in their company! x x They've since backpedaled from what their original plan was. Originally, they told everyone that every Install, reinstall, dlc, demo, and pirated copy would now cost a fee (with few exceptions, such as charity games and bundles) It's not hard to see how this could tank an indie company with ease. Mad at a dev/company? Just mass install/uninstall. Now they are apparently saying that 'nonono! We only meant the original install :)' Which also opens the door as to how they are tracking installs. They so far have seemed to be avoiding as to how on earth they are going to do that without breaching privacy on a computer. Especially when it could just be easier to make a fee based on purchases, but no. x

So you know, don't worry guys, they have their own 'proprietary data model.' But so far (As i type this, or am aware of) have not given details about how that model works. When asked about stuff such as Xbox Gamepass, Unity mentioned it would be Microsoft paying for the fees. As of now, I have no idea if Microsoft was even told this, and I doubt they are going to agree to it either out of nowhere. x Another fun thing, is if you change your Unity plan, you are added to the revenue threshold immediately. Interesting that this is after they sneakily got rid of their Plus plan, which a lot of devs seemed to use.

And interesting enough, they seem to contradict themselves from their QnA and their official twitter post regarding Demo's and Early Access, or at least tried to be sneaky about the wording?? x x

They won't charge for demos or early access, until they do, apparently. Or if the demo has data that can be transferred to the main game, anyway. Unity also claimed this would only affect 10% of its users. Which is funny when you look at all the Indie devs and studios who are coming out on twitter saying that this actually directly hurts them. Not to mention all the people that have spent years learning this engine, for themselves, or so they can apply to companies using it. And now all of that was just spat on by Unity themselves. There's also the games that have been out and are built on this engine, and can't just be tossed and rebuilt. Such as Among us, Genshin Impact, Pokemon Go and the Diamond/Pearl remakes. Overall, it's a huge mess. Unity majorly screwed up. I'd recommend looking into what games you like, and if they run on Unity. If you don't have them yet, you may want to purchase them so they are in your steam library, or whatever console you play on. With the uncertainty of all of this, I wouldn't be surprised if some companies delist their games on steam. If you buy from them now, you'll still be able to support the devs before Unity implements this new fee plan. Plus, since you paid for them, they will still be on your console/in your steam library. Please stay safe ya'll, and support your local game devs during this storm. They need it.

[wander-wren]

every once in a while i like to poke my head into "anti [x]" tags just to see what the other side thinks. recently i was looking through "anti ao3" and found a really funny post claiming that ao3 is not anticapitalist, but actually the Definition Of Capitalism, bc it relies on volunteer labor while supposedly having the money to pay a staff.

oh, honey.

but i am not going to make unsubstantiated claims on the internet, no, and this gives me an excuse to look at ao3's whole budget myself, which i've been meaning to do for a while. these numbers are taken from the 2022 budget post and budget spreadsheet.

ao3's total income for 2022, from the two donation drives, regular donations, donation matching programs, interest, and royalties was $1,012,543.42. less than $300 of that was from interest and royalties, so it's almost all donations. and that's a lot, right? surely an organization making a million dollars a year can afford to pay some staff, right?

well, let's look at expenses. first of all, they lose almost $37,000 to transaction fees right away. ao3 and fanlore (~$341k and ~$18k, respectively) take up the biggest chunks of the budget by far. that money pays for, to quote the 2022 budget post, "server expenses—both new purchases and ongoing colocation and maintenance—website performance monitoring tools, and various systems-related licenses."

in some years, otw also pays external contractors to perform audits for security issues, and for more servers to handle the growing userbase. servers are expensive as hell, guys. in 2022, new server costs alone were $203k.

each of their other programs only cost around $3,000 or less, and otw paid around $78k for fundraising and development. wait, how do you lose so much money on your fundraising?? from the 2022 budget post: "Our fundraising and development expenses consist of transaction fees charged by our third-party payment processors for each donation, thank-you gift purchases and shipping, and the tools used to host the OTW’s membership database and track communications with donors and potential donors."

then the otw paid an additional $74k in administration expenses, which covers "hosting for our website, trademarks, domains, insurance, tax filing, and annual financial statement audits, as well as communication, management, and accounting tools."

in case you weren't following all of that math, the total expenses for 2022 come out to $518,978.48. woah! that's a lot! but it's still only a little over half of their net revenue. weird. i wonder what they do with that extra $494k?

well, $400k of it goes to the reserves, which i'll get to in a second. the last $93k, near as i can tell, gets rolled over to the next year. i'll admit this part i'm a little unsure about, as it's not clear on the spreadsheet, but that's the only thing that makes sense.

the reserves, though are clear. the most recent post i could find on the otw site about it were in the board meeting minutes from april 2, 2022: "We’re holding about $1million in operating cash that is about twice the amount of our annual operating costs. There is another $1million in reserves due to highly successful fundraisers in the past. The current plan for the reserves is to hold the money for paid staff in the future. It’s been talked about before in the past and we’re still working out the details, but it’s a rather expensive undertaking that will result in large annual expenses in addition to the initial cost of implementation."

woah....they're PLANNING to have paid staff eventually! wild!

so let's assume, for easy numbers, that the otw currently has $1.5 million in reserves. before we even get to how to use that money, let's look at the issues with implementing paid staff:

deciding which positions are going to be paid, because it can't be all of them

deciding how much to pay them, bc minimum wage sure as hell isn't enough, and cost of living is different everywhere, and volunteers come from all over the world

hiring staff and implementing new systems/tools to handle things like payroll and accounting

making sure you continue to earn enough money both to pay all of the staff and have some in reserves for emergencies or leaner donation drives

probably even more stuff than that! i don't run a nonprofit, that's just what i can think of off the top of my head.

okay, okay, okay. for the sake of argument, let's assume there is a best-case scenario where the otw starts paying some staff tomorrow. how much should they be paid? i'm picking $15 an hour, since that's what we fought for the minimum wage to be. by now, it should be closer to $20 or $25, but i'm trying to give "ao3 is capitalism" the fairest shot it can get here, okay?

ideally, if someone is being paid to help run ao3, they shouldn't need a second job. every job should pay enough to live off of. and running a nonprofit is hard work that leads to a lot of burnout--two board members JUST resigned before their terms were up. what i'm saying is, i'm going to assume a paid otw staff is getting paid for 40 hours of work a week, minimum. that's $31,200.

at $400,000 per year, the otw can afford to pay 12 people. that's WITHOUT taking into account the new systems, tools, software, etc they would have to pay for, any kind of fees, etc, etc.

oh, and btw, if you're an american you're still making barely enough to survive in most places, AND you don't have universal healthcare, vision, or dental. want otw to give people insurance, too? the number of people they can pay goes down.

it's. not. possible.

a million dollars is a lot of money on the face of it, but once you realize how MUCH goes into running something like the otw, it goes away fast.

just for reference, wikipedia also has donation drives every year. wikipedia, as of 2021, has $86.8 million in cash reserves and $137.4 million in investments. sure, wikipedia and ao3 are very different entities, but that disparity is massive. and i should note that if you give $10 to wikipedia they don't give you voting rights, i'm just saying.

by the way, you may have noticed that i didn't mention legal costs at all here. isn't one of otw's big Things about how they do legal advocacy?

yes, it is. they have a whole page about that work. and i can't for the life of me find a source on otw's website (and i'm running out of time to write this post, i'll look harder later), but i am 90% sure i learned before that most, if not all, of otw's legal work/advice/etc is done pro bono. i've also seen an anti-ao3 person claim their legal budget is only $5k or so, but they didn't have a source. but keep in mind that if they don't have a legal budget, all the numbers above stay the same, and if they do, there is even less money available for paid staff.

you can criticize ao3 and the otw all you want! there are many valid reasons to criticize them, and i do not think they're perfect either. but if you're going to do so, you should at least make sure you can back up your claims, bc otherwise you just look silly.

[likeawolfatthemoon]

i am literally so tired of the multiple album variants discourse. just don't buy them!!! i haven't purchased a single piece of physical media of taylor's since 1989 (honestly i think that was even gifted to me) and i have had no problem accessing any music of hers i've wanted to listen to ever. if you want to be a collection completionist, that's your choice. if it's becoming too expensive, it can be your choice to stop!!! nobody is forcing your hand. taylor does not have a moral obligation to put out fewer things so you can have all of them, she's a capitalist billionaire and she's not secretive about that. like it's valid if it hurts your feelings that you can't afford everything, I guess, but genuinely why are we stillllllllll talking about this. like im just having fun looking at the pretty pictures knowing damn well im not going to buy a single one of these and will be streaming them and taylor will be a-ok with my streaming revenue rather than the revenue from my album sales. and as for the bonus tracks? i love piracy and she knows 100% that people who listen only on streaming but WANT to hear those will be listening to pirated versions...like she already leans in to the fact that there's thousands of people watching concert livestreams every night. she understands how the internet works. she is not missing those sales. we already know it's going to be the biggest album of the year and break records bc she's taylor fucking swift and everything she touches turns to gold. she's just having fun making more little content things to release bc that's how she knows to interact and excite us now. you don't have to buy them if you don't want to. like...genuinely start trying to change your perspective on this, y'all are making yourselves soooo upset and it makes me sad for you. not in a mean way, but in a like...you should be having fun, how can i help you have fun way. y'know. stream music, interact with fandom, you don't have to buy everything to be a fan.

[racefortheironthrone]

Why is that every Mayor of NYC, regardless of party, becomes some variety of a--hole? Are there examples of non-a--hole NYC mayors?

This seems a bit facile to me, and overlooks the nuances of a lot of NYC history. So let's look through the last fifty years of mayors and see whether it's actually true that they all become an asshole.

John Lindsay (1966-1973):

Like a lot of mayors in this period, Lindsay's main problem was NYC's long-term economic and demographic decline and the knock-on effects on the city's finances and resulting conflicts over public spending. To give him credit, while Lindsay did start the process of borrowing from Peter (the capital budget) to pay Paul (current expenses) and taking on debt to cover the hole in the capital budget, he also tried to deal with the problem by lobbying the state legislature to let him raise taxes and thus increase revenues.

That being said, the hate that Lindsay got as mayor, and he got a lot, didn't come from balanced-budget advocates. It came from white people in the outer boroughs who hated the fact that Lindsay tried to desegregate the city by pushing scatter-site public housing, that he backed a civilian complaint review board, and was otherwise viewed as being too sympathetic to black people, Latinos, and hippies.

Verdict: not an asshole. Fuck the haters.

Abe Beame (1974-1977):

The first (observant) Jewish mayor of NYC, Beame was a man tortured by the contradictions between his desire to maintain NYC's social democratic traditions and the awful economic situation he inherited. Beame became mayor during the 1973-1975 recession, which was at the time the worst since the Great Depression, and pretty much immediately had to deal with the NYC Fiscal Crisis, and was also mayor during the 1977 Blackout because clearly the Fates just fucking hated this guy.

If Lindsay was hated by white people for being too friendly with black people, Beame brought white people and black people together in their hatred of him for his public sector layoffs, his wage freezes, and his cuts to public spending. And while it's true that Beame absolutey adopted the logic of austerity and should be criticized for that, it should also be remembered that he was dealing with a well-organized and highly politicized capital strike that was backed up at the Federal level by the Ford Administration.

Verdict: kind of an asshole, but largely because he got mugged by Wall Street and the White House.

Ed Koch (1978-1989):

I think Ed Koch is the first person so far on this list that I'd call a genuine asshole (albeit a popular asshole for much of his career, hence his three terms). Starting with the fact that he got his start as a crusading left-wing politician in the Village and then abandoned his principles to run as a "law and order" candidate in the 1977 mayoral election, Koch had a long track record of running to the right whenever it benefited him personally, no matter who it hurt.

So what's on Koch's list? Well, we've got more budgetary austerity for working people while hiring thousands of more cops, starting the process of handing over the city to the developers, his opportunistic support for the death penalty, the massive corruption scandals in the Transportation and Parking departments, ettc.

However, I think the single biggest black mark on Koch's record is his abysmal handling of the AIDS crisis. Despite being a (closeted) member of the LGBT+ community, or perhaps because of it, Koch was both inactive and silent on the epidemic for years. Not only did the city spend almost no resources to deal with AIDS in the crucial early years, but a lot of ugly shit happened in NYC public hospitals that mayoral intervention could have put a stop to - but Koch did nothing.

There is a good reason why, if you talk to surviving ACT-UP members today about Ed Koch, they will spit at the mention of his name.

Verdict: asshole.

David Dinkins (1990-1993):

New York City's first black mayor, Dinkins reminds me a lot of John Lindsay, in the sense that his detractors were overwhelmingly motivated by racial animus refracted through the lens of policing. The fact that crime rates in NYC began to drop significantly during his tenure as mayor (well before Guiliani), or that he massively expanded the police force - none of that matters because he tried to make the Civilian Compliant Review Board legitimately civilian and independent of the NYPD.

That was enough to touch off a massive, and openly racist, police riot at City Hall, which Guiliani happily attended to stoke the flames of resentment against a black mayor who dared to tell the NYPD what to do.

Verdict: not an asshole. Fuck the haters.

Rudy Guiliani (1994-2001):

In the wake of the 2020 election, a lot of columnists wrote breast-pounding op-eds, asking themselves what went wrong that America's Mayor had seemingly lost his mind in service to the Trump campaign.

As someone who grew up in Guiliani's New York, let me state with confidence: he was always a fascist loon, he just used to be better at it. Having ridden a wave of racist law-and-order politics to victory, Guiliani took personal credit for the decline in crime rates that was taking place nationally - to the point where he actually fired Bill Bratton for being more popular than him - and established the "Broken Windows" policy that would give rise to "Stop and Frisk."

Guiliani's alliance with the NYPD was based on the understanding that he would vocally take the NYPD's side in any police shooting or brutality case no matter how blatantly unjustified and depraved it might have been, whether that was the shootings of Amadou Diallo or Patrick Dorismond or Gidone Busch, the torture of Abner Louima, the racial profiling of the plainsclothes Street Crime Unit, and on and on.

And then there's the fact that, having made the frankly insane decision to place the Office of Emergency Management headquarters at the World Trade Center (this after the 1993 bombing), Guiliani took a frankly unwarranted level of press adulation at a time of national trauma and used it to try to illegally install himself as the unelected mayor of New York City.

Verdict: fascist asshole.

Michael Bloomberg (2002-2013):

More genteel and a better administrator than his predecessor, Bloomberg nevertheless pursued a raft of policies that were largely harmful to NYC. His housing and economic development strategies were designed to market NYC as a "luxury good" to the world's economic elite - seriously, read up on the history of the Hudson Yards development - to the detriment of affordability, beginning the process of gentrification that has left much of this city unaffordable to the majority of residents.

The main thing that makes Michael Bloomberg an asshole is his record on policing, where he doubled down on the "stop and frisk" strategies of Rudy Guiliani, going to the absolute wall in defense of them even when the courts began to knock them down as blatantly racially discriminatory. Then add to that his creation of a massive surveillance state aimed at NYC's Muslim population.

He routinely used his wealth to bribe would-be critics into silence, and then strong-armed the City Council into letting him run for a third term.

And there's the fact that he still owes me $200.

Verdict: plutocrat asshole. Where's my money, Michael? Where's my fucking money?

Bill De Blasio (2014-2021):

I've gone on record as saying that Bill De Blasio's first term was actually remarkable for progressive policy accomplishments, from establishing universal pre-K to raising the city's minimum wage to capping rents to ending stop-and-frisk, and so on and so forth.

That being said, there were two forces in New York politics that he was never able to deal with: the first was the rampant hostility of the NYPD (I was never much impressed by De Blasio's failure to stand up to the NYPD; say whatever else you will about David Dinkins, but he didn't mince words when thousands of drunk cops screaming the N-word invaded City Hall), and the second was the constant and malicious obstruction of supposedly Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo on every single conceivable political and policy issue.

However, at some point very soon after his re-election in 2017, he just lost interest in being mayor of New York City. He still turned up for work, but even his political allies could tell that he had mentally checked out. If you're going to seek the job, you gotta do the job.

Verdict: not an asshole for four years, then an asshole for four years.

Eric Adams (2021-now):

Terrible on every conceivable aspect of public policy, but especially policing (because he's an ex-cop who ran on law-and-order politics and then found that didn't stop people carrying out random shootings) and housing (because he's an absentee slumlord who keeps getting fined for rats in his buildings).

Believes in crystal magic.

Verdict: asshole, possibly crazy?

[poorlittleyaoyao]

Care to share your backstory for Meng Shi?

Anon, I would LOVE to! I want to write about her so badly, but I have neither the stamina to finish it nor the skill to execute it properly. Here is a big wall of text of my THOUGHTS and FEELINGS described to the extent possible without needing a cw:

Meng Shi is the only child in a solidly middle-class (insofar as "middle-class" is a thing you can be in that setting) family of artisans (Painters? Scribes? The MDZS world inexplicably has no civil service system, so they can't be court clerks.) in a mid-sized riverside town near Yunmeng. Her parents teach her to read and write so she can help with the family business. She also learns to play the guqin for fun and because down the the line it'll be an attractive quality for a marriageable young lady to have.

When she is 14, her hometown is devastated by a catastrophic flood. (I go back and forth on whether this is the work of supernatural forces unchecked by cultivators--thus contributing to JGY's decision to spearhead the watchtower project later on--or if it's a regular old environmental disaster.) Her family's home and wealth are all lost, and her family themselves are all drowned save for Meng Shi and her father's youngest brother.

Meng Shi and her uncle travel and take on what work they can to support themselves, but her uncle is frustrated that he as a skilled craftsman has to work as a laborer and/or as a junior outsider subservient to a family no better than his own. He is unwilling to keep his head down and work his way up. He resents his newfound poverty and resents his niece, whom he views as a burden.

After spending some time in the merchant hub of Yunping, Meng Shi is abruptly taken to what she is told is a matchmaker. She answers the woman's questions honestly--yes, of course she is a maiden! yes, she can play an instrument! no, she doesn't think she has any ailments--but senses that the vibe is off. She's even more suspicious when her uncle won't let her see the paper that the "matchmaker" has him sign. When she catches a glimpse of the text, she tries to run. It does not go well.

Meng Shi latches onto reading, painting, and music as connections to her life before the flood. Since these things are also part of her appeal to clients, she has a repertoire of texts to read and music to play during work that is distinct from what she reads and plays for herself. It is of paramount importance that these things are kept strictly separated.

Since these skills are not shared by the other women in the brothel, they also enable her to mentally separate herself from them and her current life in general: she views herself as Different and Better, and her circumstances must therefore be temporary. This lets her keep going, but it also tanks her chances of forming kinship with the other women.

Her one friend in the brothel is Sisi, who is a couple years her senior and looked out for her when she first arrived. Meng Shi continually repays this kindness until Sisi's contract is bought out years later by a wealthy merchant who wants to make her his kept mistress. (Relatedly, JGY does not realize Sisi is among the women he exploits for his patricide until after the fact: as far as he knew, Sisi was still living with that merchant somewhere in Yunmeng.)

Meng Shi earns extra money by helping the madam with bookkeeping, a task she eventually teaches her son. She tracks expenses and revenue and knows exactly how much debt each woman or girl has left. The contract documents themselves are kept locked away and she fantasizes about finding and burning them. (When she is older, she briefly has the chance... and doesn't take it, because any hope of Meng Yao being recognized as his father's son hinges being able to prove her own identity, and the prospects for her as an unwed mother with no family or resources are slim even if she manages to shake the stigma of the brothel. She sticks with the devil she knows, because at least here she has the bare minimum of food and a shelter.)

She also keeps meticulous records of every man she ever has to serve--names, appearance, preferences, any details they share about their lives. It's insurance if things go badly, and she finds that they treat her somewhat better if they think they matter.

Meng Shi is 20 when Jin Guangshan hires her, and her decision to carry his child to term is a calculated one: since JGS has no heirs at the time Meng Yao is conceived, Meng Shi figures JGS will take her as an official concubine for the sake of his family line. The risks and physical hardships of childbirth and pregnancy are deemed worth it, because being beholden to just one man who can confer status and security is a hell of a lot better than the brothel, no matter how insufferable that man is.

Meng Shi is nonetheless blindsided by just how disruptive a baby is, never mind how long it takes her body to recover from childbirth. When Meng Yao is old enough to sleep for long stretches and no longer needs to eat every few hours, a new problem arises: where to keep him while she works now that she can't stow him in his cradle. Sisi will watch him when she can, but the other women aren't inclined to communally babysit a child they didn't choose for someone they don't like. Meng Shi gets the madam to agree to move her to a larger room, with enough space that she can partition off a section just for herself and Meng Yao. With the resultant increase in what she owes for room and board each month, plus the cost of feeding and clothing her son, Meng Shi's net income plummets. (Having a separate space makes it worth it, though.)

Even with the partitioned section, Meng Shi tries to keep Meng Yao away from the room entirely when she has to work. Eventually he works downstairs in the restaurant, but when he's younger, Meng Shi sends him up to the roof with a book and candle when the weather permits so he will be left alone.

Teaching Meng Yao to read and write isn't just about making sure he's a Proper Young Gentleman; it's also a way for her to share the things she loves and connect with her son through learning the way her own parents connected with her.

She likes to make as big a fuss as she can about festivals and birthdays, because she and Meng Yao deserve something nice.

Since the Jiang clan doesn't practice musical cultivation, and the pamphlets Meng Shi acquires for Meng Yao emphasize swordsmanship above all else, she only teaches Meng Yao the very basics of the guqin. He likes to listen to her play, though, and she composes lullabies for him that are later modified to help him with meditation. He does not like to meditate without her in the room.

She writes to JGS at least once every two months. He never responds. She tells Meng Yao and herself that perhaps he simply hasn't received the letters, though she suspects that's not the case.

There's a temple to Guanyin in the hills outside the city. It's a couple hours' walk each way for her when she's healthy, so Meng Shi doesn't get to go as often as she'd like. The monks there are kind to them, and Meng Shi is never sure whether it's because they're monks and kind to everyone, or because they don't know who she is.

No matter how much of a burden Meng Yao is, or how much she sometimes regrets her choice (to have a child, to not run away before, and on and on), Meng Shi never once considers trading Meng Yao's wellbeing for anything. She wonders what sort of monster her uncle must have been to sell her.

She is ill for a little over two years.

The only time she ever raises a hand against her son is when he suggests, in a calm and rational voice, that he should take on her debt instead. She's horrified by her action, but it has the desired effect.

She is initially buried up in the woods near the temple. Meng Yao counts his paces carefully so he can find the place again later.

[phoenixyfriend]

Ko-fi prompt from Becky:

I actually would love to hear where ticket/concession/merch money for concerts go. If someone has already asked about that, can you do something similar for a sports game of your choice?

Already got a request for concerts, but I can do the sports game!

So, let's go with... baseball. I've been to professional baseball games ('twas the Ducks), even if it's been a Very Long Time, so that's the one I have some perspective on. Who is in control of the money any given game (as in, who owns the stadium and the home team) varies by place and sport, so let's use the Mets and Citi Field as our example when we need a specific.

Mostly, this is because I'm in New York and so it's down to either them or the Yankees, and between the two... the Mets, through a wholly owned subsidiary, Queens Ballpark Company, are the ones that actually own their ballpark, which makes a few things easier and includes a Fun Fact about the naming. It also means that I can treat the team and the stadium as one singular entity instead of waffling over who gets to be the Main Character of this simulation. It's not exactly uncommon for teams to own their own stadiums, but it's not most of them.

(The Mets, btw, are owned in large part by a hedge fund manager. Like, 95% of the team stock is owned by this one guy. Why can't more sports be like the Packers and just belong to the city.)

In this case, I will be referring to the Forbes article on Citi Field's revenue for 2022 as a guide or framework, as they have an actual image of the financial report; they don't do much explaining of the actual data, though, so my part will be explaining the less-obvious things and doing some maths. A few other articles will also be cited as they come in useful.

I'll also note that the Mets are a very expensive team operating at a loss, but they still work for our purposes.

MONEY COMING IN:

Tickets, most obviously

To quote the wiki article on Major League Baseball:

"MLB is the second-wealthiest professional sport league by revenue after the National Football League (NFL). [...] MLB has the highest total season attendance of any sports league in the world; in 2018, it drew more than 69.6 million spectators."

I didn't know that until I started researching for this post, but it makes sense. After all, baseball is "the American pastime." The Forbes article cites average attendance of 33,000 per home game. The stadium seat about 41,900, so we're looking at roughly 79% attendance. This is fine, because attendance is not the only stream of revenue.

Advertising

If you have seen a professional sports game in the past however many years, you have seen that, depending on the type of court, they are plastered in advertising. Let's take a look at Citi Field:

(Image Source: MLB website)

The Forbes article states that the stadium makes about $48.5 million per year from advertising. About $28.5 million of that comes from the various 'temporary' and long-term ads, the Nikon and Geico and Toyota and Coca Cola, etc.

$20 million of it comes from one company. I'm going to quote Wikipedia again:

The naming rights were purchased by Citigroup, a New York financial services company, for $20 million annually.

This is not uncommon! ESPN has an article about it, and some standout examples are Bank of America Stadium, Coors Field, Delta Center, FedEx Field and FedEx Forum, General Motors Place, Gillette Stadium, Heinz Field, and the list just goes on. I'm not even sure if the list is up to date, because I'm seeing even more articles elsewhere with higher figures.

Concessions

The financial report that Forbes cites has $22mill in concessions. This is not entirely surprising. Going by this page, we're looking at... 84 home games in that 2022 season. Let's assume that 33,000 average cited earlier. That's 2,772,000 attendees over the course of the season. So, what, a little under $10 per attendance tick? Entirely plausible. A hot dog plus a soda is $15, so... that tracks.

Parking

Apparently parking is, collectively, about $13mill annually. That's... genuinely a little concerning to me, for uh. Reasons. Also parking is $40.

(A lot of people go to games via train, if anyone's interested.)

Luxury Suite Premiums

I had to google this one, but uh. Turns out those fancy private box seats are even fancier and more private than I thought, bringing in over $10 mill a year.

Other Revenue - Stadium, undefined

"Other Revenue" and "post season revenue" are not given any further information, but they're about $16.5 mill so. They're definitely doing their part? Wish we had more information.

One guess is that there are events in the vein of the Citi Field Spring Carnival that contribute to the revenue through either fees to the stadium (if this is a carnival that rents the parking lot) or concessions and tickets (if the stadium rents a carnival).

Other Revenue - to the team that is not direct operating income of the stadium itself

Not counting the "other revenue" section of the financial statement, the Forbes article tells us that:

National broadcasting deals with Fox, ESPN and TBS that pay over $60 million a year to every MLB team, as well as the local cable fee the Mets get from SNY, which is over $80 million a year.

That's another $140mill in addition to the $244mill that the financial report cites.

Merchandise - not direct stadium revenue.

Get your Mets hats here! And your jerseys! And your logo bats! And your commemorative plushies! And--

MONEY GOING OUT

Operations

This one's easy: you have to pay wages to your employees, from the players themselves to the food sellers to janitorial to security to field maintenance, etc. Also, you have to pay for utilities (those billboards and floodlights aren't cheap), product to sell (frozen hot dogs), supplementary materials for products you sell (plastic cups, paper for the ticket machines, bags for garbage cans, and so on), and repairs/maintenance for the stands themselves (can't imagine they get through a season with all 41,900 seats intact).

Player salaries (and a few others, like the coach) aren't actually included in stadium revenue, but since the stadium is owned by the team, we're bundling them together for the sake of this case.

Payment in Lieu of Taxes

So this is an interesting one, and while the Forbes article does touch on it, there's a bit more detail to the story.

Citi Field was built in 2009, and the process cost $850 million. Of that, $615 was public subsidies. A lot of this was municipal bonds, which the Mets have to pay back with interest for the lifetime of the park; those municipal bond repayments are an offset, and in return for paying tens of millions in municipal bond repayments each year (the 2022 report shows about $43.5 mill), Citi Field does not have to pay property taxes.

Wikipedia only cites property taxes, but the financial report doesn't include any other taxes, so I'll assume the only other taxes they're on the hook for are sales and payroll, which aren't displayed in the financial report.

Parking

Right, so, parking as a bundle is about $7.5 mill in expenses, which means that parking alone has a marginal profit of about 42.3%, given the earlier figure of $13mill in parking revenue. I'm not finding any solid information on where that money goes, but it seems very like that New York City's taxes on land use for parking is not included in the property tax exemption we discussed above, and that most of the $7.5 mill is in that regard.

Post Season Expenses

I'll be honest, they don't define this $1.8 mill, but given what is and isn't included in the other sections, I'm going to hazard a guess that this may be about upgrades (more than maintenance) or replacement of physical billboards that are also not included as regular maintenance but require a lot of manpower to get up and set if complicated enough.

General and Administrative

This is the other possible allocation of the utilities and related payments. This is also where back of house activities like accountants, lawyer fees, payroll clerks, facilities managers, and so on are bundled in. It's about $5.5 mill.

Publicity and Promotions

This one's easy, it's just marketing that doesn't fall into General Mets Things and is rather for home games specifically.

Depreciation and Amortization

Bit trickier, but you know how a car loses value the second you drive it off the lot? That is depreciation. You paid $20,000 for a car, but two years later it's worth $16,000; on a financial report, you put that down as a $4,000 loss to depreciation. Amortization is similar, in that it lowers values of various assets in relation to time and relative value to what it was when new.

Interest Expenses

Expenses related directly to interest rates tend to get their own line separate from regular debt repayments. This isn't really relevant beyond 'loans are more expensive than when you first get them.'

Travel and League Expenses

Since this is a traveling team, being professionals, and a Major League Baseball Team in particular, money has to be spent on the plane rides, team bus, and of course, the league fees. I wanted to end that a bit more pithy, but it turns out it's not easy to find league fees for the MLB.

(A new team joining would have to pay about $2.2 billion, according to one article, while previous new additions were a couple hundred mill, so... 100 mill? Maybe?)

Hope that answers your question!

[artisticdivasworld]

Why Analyzing Financial Data is Crucial for Your Trucking Business

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com If you’re having a tough time keeping your business on track. We get it—running a trucking company is no easy feat. There’s so much to juggle: maintenance, fuel costs, routes, driver management, and on top of that, financials. It’s overwhelming, and we know the last thing you want to think about is diving into those spreadsheets and financial reports. But let me…

[moolamore]

Exploring the Best Cash Flow Forecasting Tools: A Comprehensive Comparison

Are you fed up with the financial uncertainty affecting your business? Do you wish there was a way to easily monitor and precisely predict your ins and outs, allowing you to make well-informed decisions about the next steps for your small business?

If so, you're in for a treat! Prepare to transform your financial management and planning as we explore cash flow forecasting with the industry's best tool, Moolamore. Discover its amazing features, advantages, and everything in between. This comprehensive blog guide will explain why this is the solution you've been searching for.

[rsadelle]

As a person who loves workers' rights, math, and the Fast & Furious movies, the "a company will pay you $1,000 to watch all the Fast & Furious movies" headline/gimmick from earlier this year will not leave my brain.

As a Labor Day treat, let's do the math:

The company will also pay $100 for expenses, but it's unclear whether that's a flat payment or if you have to submit for reimbursement.

We're going to leave it out of this calculation.

The ten Fast & Furious movies (main series only) have a total runtime of 20.7 hours.

That makes the hourly rate $48.31, which sounds great.

However, you aren't just watching the movies.

The point is to track the damages of the car crashes so they can estimate the insurance impact of the movies.

This is going to add some time.

Assuming you're only tracking the damage to cars, you're going to do a lot of pausing and rewinding and notetaking to make sure you catch everything and get the right car types.

It's unclear if this assignment only includes the main cars or the collateral damage.

The first movie is more straightforward and consolidated; later movies have significant amounts of collateral damage.

For easy math, we'll assume an average of 2 extra hours per movie.

Your total time is now 40.7 hours, which works out to an hourly rate of $24.57.

You have nearly halved your hourly rate.

Then there are the indirect costs.

You're a contractor and may have more complicated taxes.

The company running the gimmick claims the right to use your work for an article on their website.

Said company's entire reason for being is to generate ad revenue.

Not to mention how the rewinding and notetaking will impact your enjoyment of the movies.

Verdict, based on a love of workers' rights, math, and the Fast & Furious movies: Not worth it.

[pillowfort-social]

Donation Update:

As of 01/18/2023 we have met 37% of our $4943 goal for January thanks to our generous community donors.

Pillowfort has been user-funded since the beginning. Our entire team will continue the stance of never relying on venture capital investments, as being user-funded allows us to continue to operate without compromising our content guidelines or business philosophy.

While Pillowfort doesn't have investor funding, this does create many challenges for our team. Relying only on user payments and donations limits our resources significantly compared to other sites that receive millions of dollars in investment funding. We also pay higher payment processing fees because we allow adult content. Our continued survival depends on the generosity of our community until we implement a long-term business plan such as our premium features suite. We are still on track to launch the premium features suite sometime during the first of this year. More details will be available soon. 

Our Donation page provides a budget breakdown of Pillowfort's current monthly expenses.

While Pillowfort will not have to shut down immediately if we do not meet January's goal, it is in the best interest of the site to continue to reverse this trend so we do not face a situation where we eventually run out of finances. We have been fortunate to have saved up a ‘safety net’ of funds from previous fundraising drives and periods of high revenue (an example of a high period of revenue would be November 2022), which allows us to continue working on the platform at a deficit.

If you haven’t yet, please consider supporting us with a one-time or recurring monthly payment to help keep Pillowfort online. Any money donated to us now will be applied as a credit to your account when we release paid features & benefits in the future. 

Stay tuned for more updates. Have a great rest of your week, 

Best,

Pillowfort Staff

[vethbrenatto]

Well twitch is ??? Connected to amazon somehow cause of the prime connection and critrole afaik is one of THE biggest twitch channels so idk to me it kinda tracks that amazon would greenlight it.

I totally agree that the Twitch connection plays a huge part. Because of their long-term partnership with Twitch, they've also been tied to Amazon for a long time and as the largest Twitch Channel, I'm sure when they were pitching originally for TLOVM, Amazon was probably a lot more willing to give them a chance than other streaming platforms and CR was able to secure a deal with them which gave them a level of creative freedom they felt comfortable with.

But honestly the Twitch connection really accounts for the greenlighting of TLOVM, not The Mighty Nein Animated Series. Even though of course CR is bringing in revenue for Twitch, TV shows and especially animation bleeds money. If TLOVM was not pulling large numbers, Amazon would not have greenlit TM9. Even new shows with strong watch numbers are getting cancelled constantly because they're expensive and a cheaper option can be found.

If TLOVM was a dud, TM9 animated would not be greenlit.