Important - Upcoming changes to accounting systems

[Sami]

AirwaySim is happy to announce the latest step in the development of the simulation - new and improved accounting and financial systems.

The current accounting system in AWS has been greatly simplified but with these changes we're entering the era of true business simulation also in this aspect. The old fully cash-based accounting will be phased out soon and it will be replaced with a proper accrual accounting system together with powerful financial reporting systems.

Some of the key changes of this update are:
 - Some of the expenses where airline spends cash, like aircraft or slots bought, are no longer deducted as a single expense. As a result your cash in hand is no longer alone a metric of how well your company is doing.
 - Aircraft valuation system has been changed together with a new and proper depreciation model to account for the costs of the aircraft.
 - Three new powerful financial reporting pages: Balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement.


Since this is a large update and it will be implemented on all game worlds we're giving all players some time to get to know the new system before it actually goes live. A manual page has been prepared to explain the changes and new systems, and the new financial statement pages are also available for public preview.

We highly recommend everyone to read the manual page: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Manual/Office/Accounting/

The manual page explains the key changes and also helps you to understand the new financial reports. If you wish to keep up with also with the minor updates and changes (not described in the manual), please keep an eye on the "v.1.3 previews/changes" thread at our forums.

If you have any questions of the update, please visit our forums and this topic's dedicated Q&A thread: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,51297.0.html


If you are playing in a game world you can also preview the financial staments. However please note that these pages are still partly incomplete and all data does not yet show up there, or is incorrect as the old accounting system is still in force. But you can already preview the pages to get to know them and to better understand the available data.
Balance sheet: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Office/Balance
Income statement: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Office/Incomes/New
Cash flow statement:  https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Office/Cashflow


The new accounting system will go live during January 2014 and it will be separately announced when it happens. The transition has been planned so that it will have minimal effects on running your airline. Some updates are already live, and others will follow later. Please consult the manual for more information about the key changes and transition.

When this update has been completed the next goal is to improve the price management features (route pricing, user interface) during early spring 2014, and after that move full steam ahead towards other major changes that will make the simulation world more dynamic.

[Sami]

The test world for the new accounting system is now open, check game area. Please join the world and actively test the finance systems.

Please note the following:

 * All financial systems should work now, and all information on the new financial statement pages should also work (only in this game world)

 * Company value page itself is obsolete and will be removed, but still visible (wrong information there). Company value as a number is now the same as the 'Shareholders' equity' found under balance sheet.


So please test all aircraft purchases/leases, route editing (slot valuation) etc. Tax model is simplified so far, it checks the taxes payable at the end of each week and pays it right away, there is no year-end tax checker for the moment. However taxes do take into account up to 3 previous years, any losses made there will be carried forward to the next weeks (ie. make -$500 loss on week 1, and make $500 profit on week 2 => result is $0 taxes paid on week 2). (tax system is quite untested though...)

If you happen to find any problems please report them normally via the Bug reports forum, make sure you mention it's the test game world.

As usual, the test world will not run for the entire duration marked in the game settings, it will be closed once testing is deemed to be completed. Scenario includes North America and $500mil start-up cash of which $1mil is loan.


Game: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/?gView=138#game138
Q/A thread: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,51297.0.html




edit: statistics and dashboard values are now also ok!

[Sami]

Estimated time for launch of the accounting update is Thursday Jan 16th.



Notes about transition to players in existing game worlds:

 - All aircraft you have ordered before the update goes live are treated in the old fashion, they create an immediate tax-deductible expense if there is a payment upon delivery. For aircraft ordered for lease the same applies - the prepaid 4/5 month period has already been paid/deducted so it won't be visible on income/balance statements.

 - Any existing owned aircraft in your fleet do not generate the "depreciation" expense into income statement (since they have been fully expensed already) .. you may see the depreciation in some financial estimates at the a/c page though, but you can ignore it in this case (it does not end up in the final accounts). However their book value calculation will be the same as for new aircraft (steady depreciation). (so this is merely to keep you from getting a double gain for the purchase price of the plane)

 - Any aircraft ordered after the update is live will be treated normally & according to the new system.

 - If you have recently created a lot of routes your "company value" may change a bit, since any existing slots will be set to zero value when the update goes live. This is because they have been already fully deducted as expenses. Any new routes/slots will be treated according to the new accounting methods.

 - Taxation will change to the new system on the moment the update goes live, and the new tax system will ignore any losses created on previous years (normally you'd be allowed to deduct losses created in the last 3 years). This is since the profit/loss calculation differs greatly in the old and new systems. In other words it will take 3 game years to fully reach the new tax system.


So for existing airlines there will be some inconsistensies until all ordered planes have been delivered (please keep this in mind before reporting a "bug" of it). The transition has been planned so that effects/changes on running airlines should be minimal.

[Sami]

The accounting update will be rolling in to games from now on, one by one.


Update is now LIVE in all game worlds. Please take a quick look that everything seems normal.