Cargo Profit Calculator

It's downtime on the server, so it's a good opportunity to write something up on the blog.

Eve is sometimes jokingly referred to as "Spreadsheets in Space". Given the amount of numerical data in the game, it's actually not far from the truth. And like many other players, I also have my own spreadsheets to help me summarize information and make better decisions.

A few days after starting my new career as a regional arbitrager, I started to realize I needed a better way to determine how much value I could get out of a hauling trip. So,I made a little spreadsheet in Google Docs



(Link here)

 The spreadsheet is pretty easy to use. Fields in blue are the input fields. You enter a bit of information about yourself, such as your Broker Relations skill, your ship's total cargo space, your faction and corporation standings with the station owners, the items you want to put in your cargo hold with relevant information (volume, quantity, purchase and sales prices, etc). The spreadsheet does the rest.

The spreadsheet calculates a few things for you:

• First, it calculates how much room an order will take up in my cargo hold. Yes, the game does this, but only after you've actually put the item in the hold. I want to know ahead of time how much room that item will take, before I buy it. 
• Second, it calculates how much value the cargo holds. This value uses the purchase price rather than the sale price because I want to know how much I risk losing if I'm attacked with the hold full. 
• Third, it calculates all of the broker fees and sales tax. You can enter the Broker relation skill, as well as the faction and corporation standings for both the buying and selling stations, and the rest is calculated. The Retail Purchase fields lets you indicate if you put up an order through a broker or you did a simple purchase. If it's a simple purchase, then the Broker Fees aren't calculated. 
• Finally, I calculate the overall profits based on estimated sales price, and I sum everything up in cell B6. You can also enter how many jumps you will do between stations, and that will give you you profit per jump.

I still have a bit of work left, such as replacing sales tax with Accounting skill level, and moving a few of the fields around so it makes more sense. I would also like to create a station data page, so instead of typing in the faction and corporation standings, I could just use a drop down to choose my station and that information would be pulled from it. And finally, I'd like to put this up on Google, rather than in Excel, so I can share it and have access to it anywhere.

But for now, it's a handy little tool.