More Awesome Than You!

First off, I don't have Business Runs You installed. I wanted to get a feel for how to actually do businesses without any major supporting hacks yet. I've so far made a clothing store/salon, as well as a general hang out spot. I've gotten a few questions along the way.

1. Once you've promoted a non-playable to manager, is there a way to assign them to do sales again? The townie I hired and promoted to manager will no longer do any sort of sales unless I micromanage her and click on every sim I want her to sell to. This is rather annoying, so I end up dumping her at the cash register while another townie does the selling.

2. Once you've gotten a business to Level 10 and promoted a manger, how long can you leave it alone to run itself, and will it actually bring in any sort of income for you? How do you actually get the income?

3. Does anyone know of any -good- OFB guides out there that detail things beyond the basics of what's in the expansion? I've done some google searching as well as checking other places, and I can't find anything that details the higher end of running businesses, or gives good examples of how to run different types of businesses.

Number 2: Once you have a manager just don't turn up to work.  Ring to check up.  Later on in the day/night you'll get a message saying "Your buisness made this much money today".

Number 3: Actually theres some good tips on the BBS sadly enough... have a search round there im sure ive seen tips and hints etc.

*shudder* The BBS scares me. Still, I'll take a look.

Should you do the ring-up option once a day? Or every few days?

I think the percentage you make goes down every day that you don't physically check in on the biz. You need to go in every once in a while to keep the numbers up.

Nope. Sorry. You'd have to demote, reassign. Need BRY otherwise.

With anti-decay, yes. Just do nothing, and check in ever day, and you will get an auto-income (you don't get anything on the day you return from the business). Otherwise, nope, dies soon and forces you to go back.

Any business that you don't run purely family-only is a lost cause, Maxis employees are simply so stupid and useless that they don't function. Sales employees never successfully sell anything of value (and will often give away your entire store with "offer cheap"!), and all employees will quickly stop working and just wander around your store peeing on the floor because they don't know how to handle their motives in combination with having to do actual productive work.

Basically, doing so without the fixes and BRY is an essentially pointless exercise, unless you run it purely family-only.

I know it's not awesome, but I haven't installed BRY as of yet.

I have discovered that there are some businesses that an owner can successfully run and actually make a profit.

However, most of these require the business owner to actually run the business without any employees.  Employees' wages suck all the income right outta the business.

There's a little bar in Downtown called "Lucky's Cards & Drink" or something like that.  I've remodeled it.  Put in two card tables. Every night after work the business owner goes down there and plays cards.  He not only collects winnings from playing cards but as long as he's got at least three people on the lot he makes money (installed the tickettaker doodad).  No employees, no checking in...a lot of playing poker and making friends (this is a great business for popularity types).

The other business that I have found to be extremely successful is an 'in home' gym/spa.  That business had so many customers that the lot often dragged when playing it.  And again, the money was made from the ticket-taker thing.

Want to kill your sim from sheer exhaustion?  Have them open a bakery and stock it with home-baked desserts and meals. Between the normal work of the business and the never-fixed glitch where food items don't restock and then become 'negative inventory' if an employee or family member attempts to restock an item of which there is none in the owner's inventory.  What an exercise in futility.

Oh yeah...one other moderately successful business venture - one which can have one employee (a cashier preferably) and still see a profit is a car sales lot. 

Remember just because there's a 'frowny' face at 'ridiculously expensive' doesn't mean that isn't what you should price goods at.

In real life, most retail is priced at 200% of wholesale cost OR HIGHER.  Even dollar store owners - where everything's a buck?  They don't like to pay more than 10-11 cents wholesale for stock.  So if you pay a dime and sell it for a dollar, how much mark-up is there?

Frowny face... bah.

Home businesses with ticket machines work remarkably well I found.  I just don't like them.

Brandi Broke made quite a nice living out of charging people to come by and watch her crappy tv on her single seater lounge chair.  Between customers and taking the cash track rewards, she was able to do up her house quite nicely.  By the time she closed the business (at level 5) she had added a very nice living room with best tv, high quality stereo, comfortable furniture, chess table, bookcases, etc, a well-fitted out kitchen, as well as extending upstairs for the boys' bedrooms and bathrooms.  The money coming in kept Dustin's aspiration up, too.

I just don't like the thought of strangers in a sim's home.

That's the ONLY thing you should be pricing goods at. Otherwise it's just a waste of your time. It takes maybe a sim hour, minimum, for a single customer to decide to purchase anything and check out. If you have, say, 5 customers at a time, and your profit on an item is $6, you make a whopping $30 an hour. This does not pay staff wages, if you had any, and doesn't pay for your time, or make back the investment in purchasing the store at all.

Furthermore, some items don't function even on standard Ridiculous. There should be considered an effective price floor at about $200-$500. Nothing should be priced below that, even if you have to use the custom tag to do it. It will still sell in one dazzle anyway.

To earn money on a business you're not currently working at, don't you HAVE to have a manager at it? Meaning, at some point, you have to have employees and have to get them at least a gold and silver badges?

I've done okay so far with the employees, but I might have been lucky. Of course, I've also got snapdragons scattered over my businesses, so that helps. One behind the counter, and the only need I worry about for my cashier is energy. Same thing goes for the bar in my cabana club.

I probably will install BRU, but I wanted to get a feel for how OFB works otherwise. I've had the expansion since last summer, but this is the first time I'm really actually doing anything with it, and it's mainly because my legacy heir's spouse has the 'Own 5 Top Businesses' LTW. The clothing store and salon went remarkably well as far as getting it to L10, but I lost money on it. He went into it with 100k to build it, but when it was L10, he only had 20k. That scewed me over for the next businesses, so I'm trying to figure out how to actually make money at these things too.

In theory, at the very end, but one does not need to ever actually call in or use said manager, to avoid paying his bloated salary at all.

And without BRY, energy is incurable, yes, as your cashier will not know how to fix this.

It Doesn't. BRY + Macros is the single most important thing for using OFB. Without it, businesses do not function. It makes such a HUGE difference by overriding the brick-stupid AI..but you're welcome to try "without" first. You might appreciate it more afterwards.

Price floor. Do not sell anything less than $500. Period.

Most of my regular families don't run home businesses, but the Temple of Holy Cats runs one. Customers are charged an hourly fee to use a bubble blower and pet cats. I use the No Unauthorized Persons thingie to keep "customers" out of my sims' living areas. If you start at a low price and up it gradually, tickets sell themselves.  And there's no reason to ever close!

Now that's handy to know, I thought s/he had to be on the lot, although I'm sure BRY uses the Manager for jobs? I haven't played a business in a wee while.

That's something I keep meaning to set up: a petting zoo. Overall, home businesses are incredibly cash cows. Just put a poker table or even just a chess set out on the front lawn at low levels with a ticket taker on Cheap. Lock the doors of the house to "household only". Leave it be. You don't have to interact with the customers at all, and just readjust the ticket cost to the new Cheap every business level. Add another game and give the place walls and a public toilet around level 3. With the ticket moneys and the monetary level rewards, sims are swimming in it quickly.

When I first got OFB, I took the entire downstairs of a home and converted it into three rotating businesses. One was a mirror shop, the other a robotics/electronics store, the other was an arcade with ticket machine. At all times when the two shops weren't open, the arcade was going. $$$

That's generally my approach to mods in the first place. I want to know how the game works on its own before I throw any mods at it. My tolerance level for frustration in the game is probably higher than yours, so there are hacks in your director's cut that I don't really see a need for. When I do realize I need one, I just throw it at the game and move on. Since I'm not planning on doing OFB businesses all the time (too much time suckage), I may just get by without BRY and forget about businesses once this particular sim gets the 5 top businesses LTW finished.

I must be doing something wrong, because I've run many businesses, never charged more than average, seldom used anything but "basic sell", and have always made money.  Never used any of the shiny macros to help the business along either.  Some businesses have snapdragons, others do not.  The ones that don't will require you send employees on break at least once per day, but they go eat, pee and play without problems, and come back to work when they're feeling better without my asking.  If you have an employee who can't get his motives green on his own, replace him.  Just make sure you have everything he needs to get his motives up.

Since a lot of my business sell things to other playable Sims, I'm not going to jack the price up just to make more money  I don't need.  For example, one business is a flower shop, selling mostly catalog items but also snapdragons.  Got a cashier, a salesperson, a manager (who is assigned to stocking), and most recently another employee to make snapdragons so my playable Sim doesn't have to do it all day and all night (after she goes home for the day) to keep up with demand.  Another business sells produce and fish.  Only time I've raised prices above normal is when I'm low on stock for some item like apples and I don't want the customers clearing the shelves.  Raising prices this way isn't about making more money, it's about inventory control.  The grocery market uses the customer controller so only non-poor local playable Sims buy there.

A real estate business, either out of your home or on a community lot, is special because it doesn't need a cash register or restocking.  You simply go to the phone and buy the lot back from the community (after selling it to some Sim) and place it for sale again.  You might want to make a few smaller commercial lots for "speculation" so you have something to sell.

Restaurants are a pain.  I ran one once, but got tired of it quickly.

A car lot is good.  High ticket items so you make quite a bit of money, but not a lot of items to sell so you're not overwhelmed.  You can sell cars off a driveway extension instead of the auto display, although you'll have to cheat to place more than a very few driveway extensions.

If you're just starting out with a single Sim, buy one of the tiny shops.  Edit it before you buy it so that it has enough display cases.  Money you spend to upgrade the shop comes out of your profits, so don't upgrade it when you own it.  Go in around 9 am, go home around 9 pm.  Don't stay past midnight, as that's when depreciation hits you.  Hire someone to run the cash register and spend all your time selling and restocking.  At the end of the day, you should have 3 to 4 business levels.  Go home, sell the lot back to the community, and get 5000 per business level in addition to the sale price of the business plus whatever money you made that day.  Then buy the lot back again and repeat the next day.  As long as you aren't on the lot at midnight, you don't get hit with depreciation.  Don't bother trying to get one of these tiny shops to level 10, as you won't have room for the number of customers you'll get.

In my level 10 flower shop, the owner spends all her time helping confused customers, doing an occasional sales action, and helping restock if necessary.  She's not exactly overworked at the shop. :)

Hook

I have a startup business lot that I used for Mary-Sue, and have lotbinned an unplayed version of it for use when needed.  It had to be cheap as most of the premades are dirt poor.

It's an outdoor 3x1 lot, with 2 tiles of wall at one end of it.  The hammer & sickle and wall phone are on one side of the wall and the open/closed sign is on the other side of the wall.  The BRY controller and other hacky objects are at the end of the lot behind the wall.  One counter with cash register on it.  And then flamingoes, at ridiculously expensive, all over the rest of the lot.  I do cheat, by using TJ's energy sculpture on the lot.

I make sure the sim's needs are up before I send them there, and send them home when their bladder and/or hunger needs get too low, until I can afford to add a bathroom.

If the sim doesn't have family that can help I hire a townie when the business is around level 4 or 5 to help out.  By the time it's level 10 and sold (to a customer at ridiculously expensive) the sim can afford to buy a regular business.

I haven't used it since installing Seasons, and I'm not sure how it will go.  Maybe if I add a weather controller to stop any storms, and don't run it in winter it'll be ok.

What's with employees in small businesses? Screw that. Get the owner a servo, get the servo a cash register badge and let it stand at the counter all day while your sim does sales. No stupid employees, no paying stupid employees and if the servo gets an idea to go make sheep tongue fillets, you can cancel it. And when you go home, park it in a corner and tell it to power down. Unless you trust it to do the housework.

I fucking hate employees.

Problem is, they don't manage to do this in the limited time they have, and don't efficiently manage their time. Also, they still eventually all stop working despite having everything.

But I *LIKE* inflation!

Snapdragons currently run for $5000 apiece. Screw $500. That doesn't even pay for the time and effort it takes to make them. And you know what? That's a perfectly fair price. Servos? $50K. Maxis seems to think a measly $6000 compensates for the effort it takes. Screw that. :P

Real-estate is as good as printing money, what with the endless swampland scam.

BRY is absolutely essential for a restaurant, due to the sheer amount of labor involved, and the terrible efficiency of Maxis code that runs employees at this. Otherwise there is simply no way to make a profit with employees sucking down a minimum of $15/hr apiece. Even if you don't use any employees, it doesn't pay for your time.

Hook, I don't understand what you mean by depreciation at midnight. This will be affecting the vampire-run lot overnight I guess.

How does one sell real estate - do you display the deeds and sell those? I've never tried that business.

Hook's plan involves selling the business after a day's work to cash in on the stars earned as well as the actual money made through "normal" business means such as sales or venues.  The reason depreciation hits so hard is that the combined depreciation of everything on the lot eats into your profit margins.  If you're the sort who pays attention to such things, this scheme also seems prone to memory spam.

Putting deeds on display is the most obvious way to do real estate, and the one that allows for a good markup, but using the Hook method you can earn a fair profit by just selling the deed from your inventory.  It all depends on if you want to put aside the time and effort to make a space for this sort of thing.

How do you sell deeds from your inventory? - and thanks for the other answers!

If you're selling swamp land, put the deed on display, then set it for sale.  It makes fairly good money, and if you have a 100K LTW the sales price is calculated, not the profit.  Sell three lots for 34K each and bingo!  Instant 100K LTW.

If you're selling a business you built up, you can sell it by phone back to the community and get the full price.  But you can also put it on display, mark it for sale, and get even more.  I've never tried this when I was on the lot I was selling.  Just doesn't seem like a good idea.

Hook

Cheapo business for a starter sim - "hire" a fridge (i.e. buy it, make food until it is empty and then sell it back) and sell jello until you have enough money for a bubble blower and a ticket machine. If you can afford to keep the fridge, it can supply entertainment for teenagers who like to swing on the door.

Depreciation has no effect on lots sold manually, since the actual value of the lot has little to no correlation with the price you'd sell it at. It doesn't matter that the lot is an empty, $900 3x1 lot. You can still sell it for $150K.

Another question I have is about home businesses. I stopped having them because the sims would always get visitors who turned into customers and then complained to the sims that lived there. Does this still happen?

   The only time i ever deal with a playable owned restaurant is i had one of my Rich Merchants in my Royal Challenge buy the One-Twenty, make a few changes to get rid of the EA choke points, hire some of the lower classes, then he never touches it again.  Put BRY & Customer Selector in, and only use it for my teens/adults to go to on dates.  That way my playables never have to interact with the townies. 
   For my 100k sims, it's Snapdragons on a lot, 2 poker tables and a ticket machine set at 999, and rape/pillage those townies.  For those 5 Business wants, it's same type of lot, but set at cheap, get LVL 10 with no interaction, sell/buy/rinse/repeat.  Once i've done my first business selling items to LVL 10, why go thru the hassle again.

Yup. Even when you give the ingrates a free pass.

WHat I absolutely despise about complaining customers is the fact that they will be the ones to make the mess and then complain about it. I had one throw a waterballoon at the manager, then after they both laughed about it, instantly wanted to complain about the puddle on the floor. Or they'll eat a bowl of cereal set out for them, then want to complain about the empty bowl the moment after they stand up from the table. Grr.

Does BRY fix that? Heh.

Unrelated problem stemming from the general inability of sims to comprehend cause and effect.

I use Squinges "OFB_CustomernoMoreComplaining" hack  8)
http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=7026
it still works in Pets and Seasons

I'll give that a try, thanks for the link.  :)

I did basically the same thing; however, I set my ticket machine even higher. While it is a bit of a hassel trying to get customers in, and you can't do it without the proper sales interactions, I set the ticket machine up to about $25,000 an hour. My family of two servos had more than two million dollars in two days. It is such a manipulation of the game, though, that I won't be allowing any of my other Sims the privelage.

Although Squinge's hack does help, it doesn't fix it all. It stops all complaints from customers, whether a home business or a comm lot, but that isn't what I wanted. I just wanted visitors to home businesses to behave as visitors rather than customers. But visitors still turn into customers if the home business is open when they arrive. Even booty calls! I was upset to see a Sim finally decide to do a booty call, then watch her beau start shopping the minute he arrived. Even children start shopping when invited over after school with the school bus dialog!

But at least if the home business is closed, their visitors don't start randomly complaining if Squinge's mod is installed. The customer selector doesn't help. It stops chosen Sim types from showing up as customers, but it doesn't stop visitors from becoming a customer when they arrive on the lot even if they are one of the banned Sim types.

That mod was my last hope for home businesses. Home business owners can only have friends visit them after hours.  Since I'm using Comm lot Time, I really wanted a few mothers to make some extra money with a home business since they can work an still take care of the little ones.  But I'm ready to give up on home businesses.

The visitor-to-customer logic is basically tied, likely inextricably, to the AI of sims themselves, which means that all sims, unless the option is explicitly denied, will respond to the shopping advertisements and thus start shopping on arrival.

Yes, that's actually what I wanted, for visitors and customers to stay separate, if they won't, then no home businesses. Thanks for that info - unwelcome as it is. :P

Has anyone used the coconut pinball machine (gamer career reward) in a business? 

My eyeballs popped as I watched the family income increase by about a thousand bucks when it was played for the first time last night by a guest.

The machine belongs to a newly married couple who need a bigger house. Husband is the gamer but I think Isabella's going to quit her job as chief of staff and get into the gamer field. 

Two of these pinball machines set up in an on-premises gaming hut with a ticket machine should get them a new waterfront home pretty quick.

I love in-home businesses. If my business-owner wants to socialize, I close the business. I don't have time for playing with guests and working the register or whatever at the same time anyway. If the visitor is for someone else that lives in the house but isn't currently helping with the business, I can generally keep them from becoming shoppers by paying attention to them and doing guest/host type stuff - they do go off to become shoppers if their host takes their eyes off of them though.

I get complaints, from any kind of shopper, if they've got a negative score with one of the employees/household members, if there's trash or dirty dishes, or if the shelves aren't stocked particularly with what they want to buy. Sometimes I try and fix it, sometimes I cancel the 'complaint' and sometimes I just send complain-y customers home - didn't need you anyways.

I don't understand the... obsession... with making money from businesses. One of my biggest thrills is the ability to use a business to take money away from my sims - anyone in my game 2nd generation or better has too much money anyway if you ask me, so I never bother to try and max out business stuff. Oooh, you've got extra money - let's buy a store. I buy things for the business at the wrong times and let them depreciate and everything. They still end up making a lot of money eventually, but it takes longer. Unless I need money for something specific, or to fulfill a want that I'm determined to fill, I mostly just let it worry about itself and it mostly ends up being in the 'too much' category. Then everything is easy and lesser fun.

The pinball machine is crazy.  Nannies pay for themselves.

I can't stand the constant kaching noise. If someone made a silent version I'd use it again.