Do you have Open for Business lots, and how do you keep their finances sustainable?

My major disappointment in owned businesses is that uncontrolled families still spend money both when they visit a business and also when they act as the owner. They buy useless items, and the sum of their value is slightly less than was spent buying them. A business owner still pays a salary to employees. This goes against the established convention that families not under control don't have expenses or gains while visiting because they can't be trusted to make smart decisions.

Employees require too high a salary compared to the income they bring. This is quite clear if you post them to man a single position such as a bar, a barista or a restaurant job, or even if they could do two of the jobs simultaneously. As the business level increases, they demand more, but the income from each doesn't grow. They are clearly inferior to a family member, who is easy to recruit and under direct control. But I don't like how we are required to give up an expansion pack feature. Maybe employees can work better as a sales person, where the cash flow is faster.

Overall I prefer Shop 2, which can be made to run itself, while a few family members are hanging out on the lot.

This might help. http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...hp?topic=3419.0

Also. https://episims.tumblr.com/post/190...s-for-employees

Each to their own. I love playing businesses, love peaking in inventories and seeing what sims bought for their homes, as presents or as silly impulse buys.

There are plenty of mods to help. There is lower wages as linked by Charity and also Lower Wages by Cyjon http://cyjon.net/node/109. There is also a mod so you can pay employed sims less than 'fairly' and they won't quit.
You can save money by using an auto till or auto restocker.
There is another mod that lets you hire family members.

The only business I find not to turn a good profit is restaurants.

This is another useful mod:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,3821.0.html

For owned businesses, unmodded I can make hair salons work (all you need is a salon chair, there's no restocking needed) or shops, but restaurants are difficult and seldom profitable (too many staff needed). I think you'd need the aforementioned lower wages mod to make those work.

For selling crafted items, I always start off the shop by pricing the crafted things at expensive and have some objects from the catalog on sale too, priced at normal. This means that the crafted items don't clear too quickly, giving more time to make them. Later, everything gets priced at expensive- the overall total price has no impact on the attractiveness of the item to customers, it's just whether it's cheap or expensive. So, once a good customer base has been obtained, have everything expensive, and supplement your lower cost things (crafted pots or cakes or toys etc) with statues and pot plants and cookers and tables from the buy catalog. Your business will bring in more profit from selling a $3000 painting than a $20 floral arrangement.

I only use a few business mods- cyjon's basic sell only (so that employees don't try and fail to constantly hard sell a customer- bad relationships make the customer loyalty drop!):
http://www.cyjon.net/node/151
Midge's business owner barista fix:
https://midgethetree.tumblr.com/pos...can-be-baristas
And SimWardrobe's customers leave after purchase (very handy because customer fighting is also very bad for business loyalty, and customers loitering get in the way and add to the total sim count- get rid of them and another customer will turn up!):
https://simfileshare.net/folder/87840/

I showed some of the businesses from my old hood with the profits here:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....494#post5815494

I can see how one shop selling items can turn a profit after the staff have obtained basic skills. I've done it in the past. But it's the neighborhood as a whole, which I am responsible for, that loses money. The profit comes at the expense of everyone else who is not doing business.

How do customers decide when to leave from Shop 2 (with tickets)? Sometimes they leave soon after one interaction, or other times they stay for a few hours. It looks like it might be the result of motives not getting replenished. Not turning critical yet, but also not filling up. Seems like common non-business social interactions they do, give them the shopping motive, but only in Shop 2. They seem to get disappointed after sitting alone.

Define what you mean by Shop 2 please?

That's why I like that you can place the money order in a business and playables are allowed there. That way my sims can buy all the cake they want from the local patisserie, but they can't buy themselves 20 cleanbots from the robot store. XD



That was the one I was looking for!

Shop 2, where people have to sign up with the ticket machine to enter, and don't buy anything but enjoy themselves with fun objects. In a normal shop "one" they leave soon after checking out, but how do they decide they've had enough "fun"?

I understand that they leave when their motives get too low. To keep them on the lot and paying, you should provide for as many of their motives as possible.

I don't personally try to keep the neighbourhood finances too synced up - so I don't mind if some money disappears from the neighbourhood. I use the mod that means when playable sims visit a Bandatron business (that is what I tend to call shop 2 - I've never heard that term) as NPCs, they do not actually lose money, it's called playablesdontgobroke. They do get charged if I send them there while playing their household.

Well I see that as being entirely realistic- business owners make profits, customers get something they want to buy in return.


Oh, I see- bandatron business. Yes, I think it's motives, or also aspiration, and also temperature. If you have a hot tub, in summer sims can overheat!
Also, lazy sims will sit and do something like watch TV at the expense of other motives, and sims with high hobby enthusiasm will do their hobby activities at the expense of other motives. There may be other examples- but these kind of sims will do something until they go into motive desperation over something else, then they will suddenly leave. Business loyalty affects things too. Of course I'm talking about how I've observed things- I'm not a modder at all!

When I have an owned business, I have a lot of hacks to make it sustainable.

I'm not going to let the pixels dictate what it takes, but every single one of the businesses hits level 10 and then the pixel will sell it for a hefty profit.

The goods they sell will be usually very useful-in the medieval game it's food, flowers or coins/coinage of any type.

The food is self-explanatory. The flowers (usually flower beds) are decoration and the coins/coinage is to pay off the tax collector or put aside for the household or the children.

Because I have the mod to not allow anyone to inherit money/insurance the pixels must take care of their own finances and this is the best way to provide them for the future.

@jonasn They leave if their motives drop but also if the items are things they are not interested in. Also did you disagree with me? I did say each to their own.

To keep sims even with lower motives you need items that are harder for them to leave like hot tubs. Sims will sit in those for hours.

J have not disagreed with anyone. I only use those buttons to say "ok, copy" when I don't have anything further to add at the moment.

I've got a hack that incrases the amount earned by the career reward pinball macines and they're unlocked in buy mode so I can just place a few on any residential lot inteneded to become a home business or a community lot placed for sale to be provately onwed.I also place them in common areas of apartment lots and on publicly owned community lots.It can really help in it's hacked form where they can earn insane amounts of money for just a short time playing on that machine.I've got many other hacks to help out when Pleasanview is big enough for businessses to be supported.

Do pinball machines earn money (less) without mods? I've never looked at them.

The y earn 5$ a shot unModded though I have them unlocked to buy mode and the hack changed that to 500$ a shot so sims can within an hour have up to 100000$ earned and be able to start a business or buy a community lot to build their own on.

I've made good money off a discount store belvieve it or not, But i was not using staff at the time. Staff can get annoying if you don't keep up the relationship between them and your sims they are likely to quit sooner if they are not satisfied.

One time I am not sure what happened but I changed the uniform for my only employee to work in her underware and for some reason vary soon on the same day I changed the uniforms to underware the lady sim stormed out of the store and I got a message that she quit. But on her way walking off the lot she was talking to herself and moving her hands, I've never seen this action before or again but it was realisitic but annoying at the same time.

As far as Store 2 businesses go they are hit and miss, Sims will only stay if certain objects are on the lot that have a high autonomy rating like the hot tub, the chess table or the swingset, or the treadmill, and that is pretty much it, they will buy from the vending machines though, they will buy food from a food stall, they will sometimes use the bathroom, but my parks only make about $400 simolions every time I send my owner sims to them sometimes nobody shows up at all and they come back with no money I think my park is set at $20-32 Simolions an hour.

All the sims will do is stand for a while then buy a ticket them, go on the swingset and leave they won't even go on the ferris wheel probally because it is custom content and does not have an autonomy rating value on it

Another useful mod is Simwardrobe's Customer Limit Adjuster which allows you to change the limit of how many customers visit the business at one time. I usually set it to 13-15 which means that the shop is always very busy!

Businesses are unworkable without Business Runs You and Relevant Wages. With those hacks, they work fine. If you don't like playables shopping when you're not playing them, there you can ban playable shoppers or just make it so they don't actually really buy anything.





They mean the career reward, not regular pinball machines.

Dunno about that, I had many businesses running pretty well without those in my old hood (see link in post above). I do love BRY though!

I have never had huge problems running a business.
The player needs some patience - business owners get better with running their businesses with experience!
I will simply give a bit of advice which seems to work for me:

1. An owned business should be smaller, rather than bigger, even one that uses the ticket machine.
2. An owned shop is not an entertainment area. Get your customers in and out - they don't need to hang around playing darts or something, preventing other sims to turn up.
3. Keep it basic. If it is a grocery, sell food. If it is a light shop (I have one which makes a lot of money) sell lights.
4. There is no need to keep the business open all day long. If it is getting hard for the owner or the staff to do their jobs properly, close it, send the sim home to rest, and return later. Up until a manager can be appointed, let the sim go to his business two or three times a day.
5. A business owner with more charisma points handles complaining sims better.
6. Don't expect your sim to be successful on the first day - at least give him (and his family, let them help if he has one, they are free labour) to gain the badges before you expect them to make tons of money.
7. Lock the doors to the staff kitchen to keep the customers out, they will eat all the profit and more.
8.Players need to be patient too! The sim has to be taught or conditioned to be good at running his business.
9. HAVE FUN.

I remember when the business expansion came out, I went to play it at my friend's house. I remodeled a building in Bluewater and turned it into a restaurant, the restaurant worked almost from the beginning. There were thousands of simoleons in profits and everything progressed very fast. I still remember it as one of the best business I've ever done.

That's nice. Did you have employees in the restaurant?

I first attempted the default businesses of the flower lady and the furniture. It worked well with Tessa Ramirez alone running from one job post to another. Until I started noticing people unable to buy anything because their households had run out of money. Now my employee in Club Dante quit, after his opinion changed to "very underpaid" for no apparent reason.

I changed the Walk Away From Portal function to stop visitors from walking deep into my house, e.e.

Yes, I hired quite a few employees.