Quick Introduction
This is going to be a tutorial explaining the custom business addon we have on this server. I will be explaining many of the different aspects of businesses such as creating, how to run the business using the many tools that are provided, how the stock market works, and just many other useful things. If you have any further questions, please reply with them. Same as any things that I missed out on, or explained wrong or anything like that.Types of Businesses
There are two types of businesses, banks, and just a standard business. All of the stuff explained here will be explained more in-depth later in the thread, this is just to give the basics of each.Standard Business
With a standard business, you can do whatever you want, where it is a cool restaurant business, and exclusive gun shop or just your bank account to flaunt your wealth. They cost 1,000,000£ to open. There is plenty of tools at your disposal to make your business dreams a reality. Profit for these standard companies is completely done by whatever the business is about, so you sell guns you might put your profits in the treasury or profits of whatever meals you make. Other ways to make money is through investing in other companies which you can through by using the parenting system and receiving dividends. To round this all up to you also have a full stock market where people can buy and sell shares privately or public depending on which you prefer.
Banks
Now banks are a little more set in stone on what you have to do. They cost 100,000,000£(70,000,000£ on cc) to create. You have all the tools of the standard business with a few extra fun tools. As a bank, you can make custom bank accounts controlling the opening fee, interest the account holder gets every day, maximum balance, an overdraft fee(Amount extra they can withdraw). You can give out loans and control the interest and amount of days people have to pay for the loan, as well as the money they have to pay if they don't fulfill that promise. Now you may be wondering how banks can make money and not go bankrupt if they are just giving out interest in bank accounts, and the answer is through investing, either people investing in your bank or you investing in other businesses to gain money from dividends.
How to create a Business?
Now creating a business is pretty self-explanatory first off you must type /businesses, you will be greeted with a UI showing the top-performing businesses. At the bottom, there is a little bar that says "Create Business" click that and you will be greeted with a screen that lists the two types of business, Banks and a Standard Business with a paragraph below with information about them. A Standard Business costs 1,000,000£ and a Bank costs 100,000,000£(70,000,000£ on cc)
What you should see when you type /businesses
What the create business UI looks like
What the create business UI looks like
Alright so now you can choose whichever business you want to make, you need the money on you to create it(So go fast before tax day if you are making the bank!!). Click the start button underneath whichever Business type you chose, should be greeted with a new UI asking you to fill out the Name of the company, and the logo and banner. Now a common issue I see when people are making the logo/banner is they either use incorrect size or don't have a proper link. The sizes for a logo should be 512x512 and a banner should be 1200x100, I will show you examples below in the spoiler. Now the link one is pretty simple to solve, it must end in .jpg or .png. A great website to use to upload these images is Imgur, when you first upload the image it won't directly have .jpg at the end you must right click it and click open image in new tab to get that type of link. It should look like this Basic rule of thumb make sure the name or images are appropriate no porn or gore or racist or anything like that. Now for the philosophy, you can put whatever you want its just kind of explaining what the business is. The initial share count should start at 1000 which is good for a new business(as you become more valuable increasing is a good idea). You can change all of this later, the images may take a while to appear
What the UI looks like
What a logo looks like, with the correct size
What a banner looks like, with at correct size
What a wrong size banner looks like, Make sure to use proper sizes, photoshop is a great tool for this
How to use a Business?
Good stuff, you have created your business/bank, this section is to explain the business UI and how to run the business. Most of this will be explained using the standard business, and bank exclusive stuff will be mentioned more towards the bottom of this section.
How to access your business?
In order to access your business, you must once again type in /businesses. You will be greeted with a nice little search bar at the top, in which you can search for your company name. Once you find your business, press the visit button under it.
Business UI
Below is an image where I explain each element of the UI, the view stock market, shareholder area, employee area, and subsidiaries & owners will all be explained more in-depth later in the thread.
Employee Area
Assets
So the assets are where you can buy the logos and banners to place around the map, you are limited to two each. You will have also something called a business card reader, which you can set the cost of whatever. The money goes directly from the person blue atm in the businesses treasury which is pretty neat. If you own a bank you will also be able to spawn in an atm which you use to make a bank somewhere on the map. When you buy an asset the money is withdrawn from the treasury. Below is an example of using all of the assets and the asset menu.
Business Settings
This is where you can change the name of the business, logo, banner, and the share count.
Edit Roles
Here is where you can create roles, change the wages/how many wages they can receive per day while under active employment, the color of the role, and what things they can do within the business like spawn assets, accept job applications and for banks create bank accounts and offer loans. There is part called hierarchy which you can set to whatever amount, its how you determine leadership in the company. Presidents/Vice Presidents or whatever you decide to call them should have a high hierarchy level. That allows them to control the lower levels in things such as editing roles and firing. Below is what the UI looks like.
Job Application
This is where you can accept or deny job applications people make for your business. Below is what it looks like.
Treasury
This is what the business revolves around, money. The treasury shows how much total money you have in your company. You can deposit and withdrawal money. In the middle, there is a nice handy graph that shows you the history of your treasury value. On the right is a transaction history where you can see every purchase of an asset, deposit, withdrawal all logged to view at your disposal. Below is how it looks.
Staff
The staff section is where you can change the roles of your employees, fire them, or award bonuses if they have been extra good. Earlier I mentioned how you can set wages, on the bottom it shows how much money it would cost if everyone works the maximum amount of hours. Very useful to help figure out what is draining money.
Bank Accounts(Bank Exclusive)
Here is where you can make, delete and edit bank accounts. You can control the interest percentage which is whatever amount of money in the account they get extra every day. For example, having 1 mill in an account with 1% interest would give you 10k. The overdraft limit which is how much they can withdraw extra if they withdraw extra there bank account will go into the negatives. The maximum balance, basically the maximum amount of money you can put in an account, but if they get interested it will go over. Also, the account open fee which is basically how much they have to pay to open the account. On the right, you can search for which players have accounts using steam ids, player names, or the account type. In the bottom right you can click Create Bank Account which opens a menu where you can open a bank account for people. The money is taken from the players' wallets, so make sure they have the money on them. Screenshot below of course so you can see what I'm talking about.
Loans(Bank Exclusive)
Now with loans you can give players loans from the bank treasury, THEY ARE NOT REQUIRED TO PAY IT BACK SO BE CAREFUL. You can choose the loan amount maximum of 10 million. You can choose the amount of money for a loan(Max 10 million), the interest percentage of the money you gave out they have to pay extra. The time limit in which they have to pay the loan and overdue fee which is the amount of money they have to pay each day if they are late to pay back the loan. Also in the bottom right, you can see nearby players' history with loans, in the screenshot you can see mine. If you see someone with my track history you might not want to trust them with loans. Now a question you may be asking is why would I give out loans if they aren't forced to pay them back. Ways to ensure, the loan system has the overdue fee so the more they wait for the more they have to pay back which means they will try to pay it back earlier, another thing is you get annoying popup every time you respawn reminding you to pay back a loan (Trust me it is very annoying). Things you can do on your side is constantly raiding, placing bounties frequently(not spamming) or just annoy them into paying it back.
Policies
This is where you can control which actions in the business you are required to vote for, some examples of things you can change voting for are changing roles of employees, changing banners, or accepting job applications. Voting works by the shareholders, so you 50.1% of the shareholders to vote for something in order it to get passed. So removing voting makes running the company a lot easier if you are not the majority shareholder. Another thing in this section is IPOS but I'll explain that later in the stock market section.
Subsidiaries
This is where you can choose to become a subsidiary of a company or release a company that you're a parent of. I'll explain this in-depth lower in the thread, but basically, you get 10% of the profits of the company you are the parent of. Obviously, that means the company that is the subsidiary loses 10% of there profits but the trade-off is people will pay lump sums for them to be your parent.
Other stuff
There is a few other stuff in the employee area in the middle you can post employee news, that only the employees can see. On the right is where votes popup, so if you have the policy set to require a vote to accept an application it will pop up there. In the top middle, it says start active employment, if you click that you will have a popup above your head stating your position and what company you work for, as well as you will get paid the wage every 10 minutes for whatever role you are.
Shareholder Area
The shareholder area has a lot less information, basically, here you can vote to replace CEO, you need a majority vote for that to pass. You can see current and past votes here as well as there is a short cut to the stock market.Subsidaries and Owners
Now this is a pretty cool feature in which I will give an example to better explain it. Back in the day, Prime Vault was a thriving bank, and the bank approached interested in becoming its parent. Now after 30 minutes of tough negotiating with Ventz, VBANK paid about 119,765,231.5£. The reason VBANK paid so much is Prime Vault was a new thriving bank and he saw a return on investment. When you become the parent of a company, you get 10% of there profits every single day. Now that is only if they end the day with more then they started. This is a great way for banks to make money, investing in new companies. A good strategy for people with a decent amount of pocket change is to parent a bank early on. If they continue on a good path you will make a profit. Below shows how companies can make a lot of money, by becoming the parents of companies, and they become parents of other companies, and so on. Stock Market
Alright this is hard to explain so I will use examples. So say we have a company called Landfield's Bank and they are worth 100 Million and have 1000 Shares(This is the initial shares you set when you created the bank). Now I own 51% of this company which means a few things, I am worth 51 Million because that is 51% of the company, I own 510 shares in the company which I can sell all individually, and I own majority so I can't be kicked out of CEO, and I control all of the votes. There are two ways to sell shares, privately 1 on 1 or using the stock market. Now selling privately usually means you are selling for less, or your company is public yet. Now if you sell it publicly using the stock market you can't cancel the sale, and there is no guarantee you will sell it.Going Public, IPOS, and Dividends
So when you open a business it starts as private, when you are ready to make your business go public here is how to do it. In the policy section at the bottom, there is a part called IPO now and IPO is a percentage share of the company you are putting for sale on the stock market for someone to buy. Now what's different with this from normal shares, is with normal shares you get the money. With IPOS the money goes directly into the treasury, which is very nice for banks who need help with money. A good IPO amount is around 5% for a bank, for a business that isn't worth much you can go higher. You just want to make sure it can sell, as you can not cancel it. Now that you are public you can another fun reward, which is Dividends. Basically, if your company makes a profit on a given day while you are public, 5% of that profit is divided and split amongst the shareholders. So if the company makes 10 million, 5% of that is 500k. Now using the 51% I mentioned earlier you would get 255,000 which is pretty cool.Tip, Tricks, and commonly asked questions/issues
How do I make money? Well for banks you can make money through investing in other companies, opening fees on bank accounts. For Standard Businesses, you can get money through whatever your business is so every time you make profit selling guns putting it in the treasury, or profit on cakes you sell as a chef, it all depends. Also investing can help you with parenting companies, and buying stocks when they are low and selling them when they are high.
I'm bored of running this business, How do I get out? Now there is a couple of ways of getting out of businesses, one is selling all of your shares which may be difficult or take long. Another option is cashing out, obviously doesn't go for banks because people have money in bank accounts, here is cloaks thread on how to do that without breaking rules.
Some common issues. When you first go to a business atm you may have to back up and got back to it. When you deposit a bunch of money, the leader boards in spawn and the stocks don't immediately change just have some patience. Sometimes it takes a few seconds for logos to appear when you put in the link just wait.
- Final notes from me. If there is anything at all wrong with this thread/inaccurate just contact me, any feedback you have please post below. Anything thing I missed or things you think I should add please let me know.