EDIT - is this buggy? - business deeds, income and managers

[cwykes]

Are there some does and don'ts about business deeds?
Never take the original deed out of the inventory seems like a good rule based on my experience last night. 
I took a deed out of Ajay's inventory to sell while I was in another of his businesses thus boosting profit for the day.  I got a message saying I couldn't do that when I tried to mark it for sale.  The lot is a ticket machine lot and I don't have a till, so I thought... wrong kind of lot and put it back in his inventory.  Now the game doesn't think my sim owns the lot, but he still has the deed in his inventory.  I guess I can fix it with SimPE, but next time I'll order a copy and sell that.  The only posts I found about deeds are mixed up with posts about uniforms in "entire business lot poofed from existence"  http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,3302
EDIT - this must have been a duplicate deed of a property already sold.  Or some other mess in my game.  I was selling original deeds fine in the estate agents last night.

Who can you promote to manager?  Based on observation I think it's any sim with 6 badges of any kind but teens can't be managers.  Is that right or does badge type matter?

Does ALL income and expenditure on the lot count towards daily profit?  the 50,000 business perk certainly did!  Making stuff to sell on another lot does bad things to net income - obvious really....   Taking stuff in and out of inventory has no effect, but buying and selling items does.  So buying a sculpture at home to make your fortune sim happy and selling it on the lot is another income booster - he doesn't see to lose the aspiration points either....  Going a step further buying a lot at home and selling it for the same price in a business lot adds a nice filip to income.   I didn't notice if raiding money trees counted as shop income, but I bet it did.    Really this is too easy to cheat!

[J. M. Pescado]

Anything that gains money counts as income, anything that loses or costs is the opposite. It's pretty easy to thus manipulate your business profits via Enron-esque accounting tricks. Just don't try it in real life, cuz those people go to prison.

[MissDoh]

You don't need 6 badges you need a total of 6 points so the Sim can be promoted to manager.

Bronze:  1 point
Silver:  2 points
Gold:  3 points

I see no reason why teen could not be manager. 

[cwykes]

Thanks MissDoh - nice to know for sure how promotion is supposed to work.  It's not working like that for poor Ajay Loner's employees though    I think the problem is that the townies come with badges, but no count of the points for the badges in their want history.  So they have to earn their 5 points on his lots.  Another EA created mess in other words.  Can anyone confirm this?  I've had a look at the townies in simPE but I'm not sure I'm looking at the right code.

Here's the story of Ajay Loner's search for a manager for his swmming pool - He hired a townie with a gold sales badge - couldn't promote him to manager.  He hired a townie teen with lots of skills - she was up to 7 badges before I decided maybe you just couldn't promote teens and fired her too.  She was learning flower arranging and robotics at the pool to try and earn that promotion- the inventory is useful but it's hell on the pool profits.  Ajay fired both these guys and hired a townie with a few irrelevant badges, but needing sales skills.  The replacement worked on his sales at the pool and by the time he got to 6 badges in total (about 9-10 points) I could promote him.  On that showing either the Prima guide is wrong, which won't be the first time, or my game is a bit buggy... or the townies who come with badges are buggy.

Ajay is also getting wants to promote a sim who has already been promoted.  Not sure what is going on there.

[dusty]

Are you using the relevant wages mod? That can affect whether you can promote, I think (eg if one of your employees badges is for cosmetology in a non-cosmetology-related business it doesn't count).

I promoted a teen to manager the other day, but have not successfully phoned to check in on the business - it keeps saying the business doesn't have a manager. When I send my sim back to the business the teen is still employed as a manager, so I don't know what that's about.

ETA: The teen I promoted was a townie.

[cwykes]

yes I have got that relevant wages in, but I didn't think that affected management potential only wages - have to rtfm.  Anyway the first employee and the teen had gold sales badges which ought to make them promotable.  Sales is the only relevant thing on a ticket machine lot and gold is 6 points.  So you have a problem with teen managers too, just not the same problem.

[jrd]

The relevant wages mod does affect managers, as they need to have 5 points in total in relevant categories. If you have a flower shop for example, this means the manager-to-be must have 5 points over sales, restock, cashier, and flower making as only those are relevant.

In a barber shop you couldn't promote any Sim to manager as only cosmetics count, so you'd need to add other business items before they become relevant. Fortunately once promoted managers stay promoted.

[jsalemi]

Sales is the only relevant thing on a ticket machine lot and gold is 6 points.

Gold is 3 points, silver 2, bronze 1.

[cwykes]

My math was 1 for bronze sales + 2 for silver sales + 3 for gold sales = 6 points.  I guess you mean the points aren't cumulative. 
That explains why the townie with gold sales and nothing else couldn't be promoted.
I'll go check the other two, but I still suspect the townie SWAF history doesn't match the badges.  Unless I'm really cracking up, they both had gold sales and 3 or more points in other skills

[J. M. Pescado]

In a barber shop you couldn't promote any Sim to manager as only cosmetics count, so you'd need to add other business items before they become relevant. Fortunately once promoted managers stay promoted.

This is how you do it with business types where this condition is true, get the items, promote manager, ditch items. A barbershop, however, does have >= 5pts worth: Cosmetology, and Sales.

[jrd]

Badges are indeed not cumulative. They're stored as tokens inside the SWAFs, and I have noticed before that a Sim had a gold badge in game but only a silver token in SimPE. This is because badges are built (like skills), I suspect SimPE uses a slightly different rounding mechanism than TS2.


Pesc: sales works in a barber shop? Hmm. I'll have to check that... might make then *useful*.

[J. M. Pescado]

When the customer is pondering at length whether or not to go for it, he'll be in sales carrot mode. You can use sales on him when he's in that state. Charge him $1000 for the privilege of being mutilated AND get a tip!

[Jelenedra]

I usually ran a salon that also sold "hair care products" (custom content that looked like bottles of hairspray and bath decorations" so you can also have a cashier.

[cwykes]

Apparently the relevantwages mod does tweak the badges counts so that's probably why I had trouble promoting to manager. 

I still can't make sense of the business data in SimPE, but if it's been tweaked that might explain why I don't understand it.  I can usually puzzle stuff like this out - if I can't I tend to assume it's wrong, so if anybody can explain it I'd be grateful.  The hidden skills and badges view is useless, the drop down tab only has bronze badges and it says 100%bronze when the guy has a gold.  I've looked at memories.  I've looked at SWAFs.   I've looked at the flag on the business tab.  Can't make sense of it.

Take what looks like an employees count (EP3 - employees D077A5EC):
Ajay has a count of 11 - he has 11 employees that I can see in SimPE - I thought there were 2 more - need to check.
Tina has a count of 2  but she's one of the townies he fired who didn't have enough points for manager!
Sally has a count of 3 - she's the manager and sole employee at Ajay's Hair.
Abhijeet has a count of 4 - he is a one of Ajay's managers and there are 3 other employees in that business.

On what looks like a badges count (EP3 - badges  D07674A9):
Ajay has a count of 0.  He has 5 gold badges in memories - he earned all his sales badges selling makeovers by the way!
Tina, Sally and Abhijeet all have counts of 2. 

In memories:
There are no memories for bronze or silver.
Ajay remembers all 5 gold badges
Townies have no memories of gold badges before Ajay employed them.  They remember gold badges earned after that.

The flag on the business tab (ignoring first x 0s):
100010   3 of Ajay's 5 managers  - 2 are allocated to a task 1 isn't
100001   1 - new hire Bella Goth who hasn't been to work yet
100000   6 employees all allocated to a task
000100   2 - Ajay himself and the gold badge stylist who quit on him
000010   3 ex-employees including the 2 he couldn't promote at the pool
000000   1 - PT9 who is employed to restock

You can probably tell I hate not understanding stuff like this. 

[vcline]

I usually ran a salon that also sold "hair care products" (custom content that looked like bottles of hairspray and bath decorations" so you can also have a cashier.

Oooh, where'd you get these?  I'm hoping to set up a salon soon and would love something like this.

[dusty]

I usually ran a salon that also sold "hair care products" (custom content that looked like bottles of hairspray and bath decorations" so you can also have a cashier.

Oooh, where'd you get these?  I'm hoping to set up a salon soon and would love something like this.

http://www.welldressedsim.com/roomset.php?id=000340
That well dressed sim set has some that are free.

[cwykes]

Half the attraction of a hairdressing business as a start up is that you don't have a cashier.  Only 2 skills to learn.

Last night I discovered you can't call a repairman to your business to fix the PC.  Poor Ajay struggled manfully to fix his laptop and was lucky to get fried rather than killed.  You can influence some passing sim to do it, if you don't mind risking frying your customers.  Ajay has made friends with a couple of repairman, so he invited one to a ticket machine lot, whipped out his laptop and got them to fix it.  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to call a repairman to a business and just pay the fee.  You could even have a "special business rate" - 20% extra...

Ajay also had 3 employees plummet from fairly paid to massively underpaid and about to quit. 2 of them were new hires who came for 15 and suddenly wanted 40.  As far as I can tell it happened suddenly and I think the trigger was them gaining a new badge which ought just to move them 1 box to underpaid right?  Wondered if the relevant wages mod didn't cope quite right with that situation.  Maybe it's normal, or maybe it happens gradually and I haven't noticed.  Please say.....

Pricing real estate also wasn't working right - everything kept repricing itself!  Buy a deed, take it out of inventory, click the inventory button and set it to ridiculously expensive or even average (+27%).  Go back into the game and it's selling for a custom price of +10%.  The markup has been capped.  I wondered why all this real estate was just selling itself!  The way to avoid it is to do it in two parts.  Buy the deed and take it out of inventory.  close the inventory. play a millisecond or two.  Then open the pricing tool and put it on sale.  That way the price sticks.  A fix for that would be rather nice too.  I'm selling original deeds just fine.  Whatever problem I had a couple of days ago was obviously my fault - maybe I had a duplicate deed in my inventory and had already sold the lot.  When a lot sells, the deed disappears from the lot, but any duplicates remain.

Still researching managers - I got too involved in the real estate business last night...  I think the problem is relevant wages rather than game bugginess though.

[J. M. Pescado]

Last night I discovered you can't call a repairman to your business to fix the PC.  Poor Ajay struggled manfully to fix his laptop and was lucky to get fried rather than killed.  You can influence some passing sim to do it, if you don't mind risking frying your customers.  Ajay has made friends with a couple of repairman, so he invited one to a ticket machine lot, whipped out his laptop and got them to fix it.  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to call a repairman to a business and just pay the fee.  You could even have a "special business rate" - 20% extra...

If you have BRY, and have a sim with good (6+ or so) mechanical skills, assigning them to tidy up will cause them to repair equipment.

[cwykes]

Ajay has 6 points and he got fried.  I'd rather call a repairman than take pot luck on which customer has enough mech points to fix it. Messing with laptops is a job for a professional   

BRY?

[J. M. Pescado]

Ajay has 6 points and he got fried.  I'd rather call a repairman than take pot luck on which customer has enough mech points to fix it. Messing with laptops is a job for a professional   

BRY?

BRY, Business Runs You!. And hey, shit happens. Besides, why abuse one of your customers when you can abuse one of your employees? If they get fried, maybe it'll cost you less money to pay them.

[jsalemi]

Last night I discovered you can't call a repairman to your business to fix the PC.  Poor Ajay struggled manfully to fix his laptop and was lucky to get fried rather than killed.  You can influence some passing sim to do it, if you don't mind risking frying your customers.  Ajay has made friends with a couple of repairman, so he invited one to a ticket machine lot, whipped out his laptop and got them to fix it.  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to call a repairman to a business and just pay the fee.  You could even have a "special business rate" - 20% extra...

Squinge made a mod that does this, called "communitylotservices".  Doesn't charge extra, but it lets you call repairmen, gardeners, and I think maids to owned community lots. You can find it in his forum over on insimenator.net.

[nectere]

I cant seem to have a manager in my nightclubs...thus I have quit playing agin. Stupid rules.

[J. M. Pescado]

That's probably because if you're using Relevant Wages, Nightclubs don't exactly have a lot of relevant badges. Matter of fact, they don't strictly speaking require ANY skills or badges. Thus greatly complicating things. You might want to just cave and get a "Promote Anyone You Damn Well Please" hack.

Because it's not like REAL managers have to know anything about, well, anything.

[J. M. Pescado]

Missing Manager Bug now confirmed. Bug hunt in progress. Fix being tested now.

UPDATE: Fixed. Go get it.

[cwykes]

Pricing real estate also wasn't working right - everything kept repricing itself!  Buy a deed, take it out of inventory, click the inventory button and set it to ridiculously expensive or even average (+27%).  Go back into the game and it's selling for a custom price of +10%.  The markup has been capped.

What's with this pricing?