Advantages of Residual Income Residual income is a dollar measure of performance. Even though the percentage rate of return is a familiar format for managers, and takes away the impact of size from the measure, at the end of the day, the dollar income does count. A manager can become so focused on the return on investment, that profitable projects that return more than their cost of capital may be rejected. Residual income refocuses the manager on the profit.
To illustrate the use of residual income, consider the Snack Foods Division example again. Recall that the division manager rejected Project I because it would have reduced divisional ROI, which cost the company $300,000 in profits. The use of residual income as the performance measure would have prevented this loss. The residual income for each project is computed below.