Honestly Im not sure what I am doing wrong . . .

it is so hard to even get a business to level 3!
I hire people with badges and use the ticket machines, which those businesses are slow but make progress better than toy stores, bakeries & etc. . .
The owner's hardly make a profit I have to give them a business grant in the form of using familyfunds just to keep them afloat.

I was playing the premades from Bluewater, specifically Delarosa & Tinker yesterday
(and the tinkers bought one of the toy stores )
I'm struggling to get people to buy things, they complain its too much but I still need to make a profit.
I'm not really sure there are mods to make ofb easier like easier sales or faster badge earnings.

How do you guys get Level 10 businesses and keep them successful without sending the owners into debt! :D

You are hardly making a profit as you are hiring people who the owner has to pay. if it's a ticket business hire no one. if it's retail try and have a couple run it for as long as they can before hiring a cheap as possible teen to restock.

Retail business gain stars faster. Ban witches so they don't cause thunderstorms. I had a lightning strike from one of those and sims lost stars left right and centre due to the tree fire. My new business went down to -3 stars. Worst start I ever had.

You need to start with prices at cheap with only a couple set at average. Customers will buy more items and be happier, happier customers throw stars. As you go up levels you can raise prices. It's always good to have a cheap section for poor playables. If a sim is hanging around and not buying say goodbye. If you hire no one the tinkers will make money. One mans the till and the other does sales and restocking. Between make sure the one of sales and restocking takes care of their needs unless you have snap dragons about. Once they are taken care of switch them around. The one on the till can take care of needs and do sales and restocking. You should be able to do this up to about level 3 and then hire a teen to restock. Use espresso and close if needs get too low. Make yourself a good break room. If you use sleep on community lot mod then they can have a sleep. You need to micro manage them heavily. Espresso will not work if you let them get too tired.

I have numerous level 10 bushiness. Apart from sleep on community lots and skilling on lots I also use a mod so telling the employee to get back to work doesn't take a social hit because that is plain stupid. I don't use any other business mods except the visitor selector if I want a certain clientele and the one from MATY to set what kind of business it is. I also use community lot time though, so if they spent all Mon-Tue-Wed at their shop they do not get that Mon-Tue-Wed back at home. I do use an auto till for my hospital but I may change that and hire someone soon. The auto till might help you with your retail shops until you have the hang of it.

If you want a crafting business make sure to sell catalog items as well. You need to be turning a good profit and sims with gold badges before going over to all crafted items. I love playing business I find them a good challenge.

In my current hood I have three working buisnesses. One is level ten, one is level five and the other was level two before the owner died and had to be resurrected.

Both the first and the third are home clubs, townies and playables come, pay for an average ticket on the bandtron, and settle down with the various things advertising fun. My business owners clean and chat to the guests but I never make them try and sell tickets. The level ten business earns $10,000 a season and invests maybe $1,000 in running costs and upkeep. The level two business was making $2,500 a season and breaking even but they're just starting up.

The level five is a home shop selling produce and prepared meals. They would be higher level but I only open the business when they are short on money. The household all help with business, one restocking, one selling with basic or hard sell to anyone who comes and one as the cashier. I rotate who is on what task so they all have badges.

I don't use employees until the business is level four or use community lots for businesses. You end up playing the household through the day twice which I find boring and it's harder to get or maintain a good level. When I have used community lots I used a hack to make time pass on the home lot, I had playables employed as the manager and employees, used businessrunsyou, bathroomusesyou, and macrotasics to make employees work, and ofbfixes to make employee wages sensible. The business owner checked in everyday with each business and spent a day per week on each lot which would raise the rank and the base income that then drops over the course of the week until you visit again because he owned five businesses and left each of them making a profit even if one was making a lose by the time he visited them it harmed his profits but didn't stop him profiting.

I have to admit, I tend to cheat with the motives when I am playing a business lot. And so, I usually rise 2-4 levels each time I go to play it. I get so into it that I hate having to return home in the middle of everything. For that reason, I also use a hacked object to keep my employees motives raised, whereas before, I used the business perk that allowed you to raise the motives of your employees, at a loss of your own, but when I saw this hack, I figured it wasn't anymore cheating than I was already doing, cause I used the testingcheats code to raise my shop owner's motives after raising my employee's motives legally anyway.

If I had to play a business 100% legally, with the employees refusing to eat/drink anything I set out for them, going into an orange mood 1 hour after arrival and throwing a hissy fit if they have to work from 10 am to 6 pm two days in a row (gasp), I doubt I would ever make it to level 10. Well... I did, back in the day before I got internet, but it took a very long time.

No need to play the house twice if you use Community Lot Time.

Thanks for the suggestions, I sent the Tinkers daughter to school and the wife is pregnant now so she used to do the cashier and the husband would do the sales so now I have 3 workers with good badges, and I have to pay them so much. But I will try to sell cheap items for now since they are struggling right now.

I would fire two and just keep one. He can either man the register or use the simlogical automatic cash register and have him do the restocking until your business is more profitable. Three with gold badges would be draining your profits.

Only applicable to retail-business where you sell things. I have zero experience in the other kinds.

Have many items are you selling in your shop? I had trouble figuring out businesses at first, then I googled around and realized that I was trying to run a shop like one would in real life, and Sims isn't real life. Having lots of items just makes for a lot of things to restock and lots of area to cover. Also, selling cheap items means you make less profit per item, and have to sell more items to cover the cost of employees, so in the end you're actually worse off. Remember that Sims care more about if an item is set to cheap/medium/expensive/whatever, than the actual cost. A cheap car costing 5000 is more attractive than an expensive flower pot that costs 10. It's weird, but that's how the code works. More expensive items = easier to make a profit, because a) you gain more even with less profit margin and b) you don't have to make lots and lots of sales just to keep things going.

Also, as others pointed out, really evaluate how many employees you actually need. Since you're struggling, I'd start with a very small business and expand as you figure it out. A small shop with 5ish items can be run by just the one Sim. Someone want to pay? Go be cashier. Someone pondering buying something? Sales interaction. Someone arrived and looking for something? How can I help you! I find one sales interaction per item purchase is enough, so if you've helped everyone once, and nobody wants to pay yet, then restock.

Prioritize in this order
Cashier > How can I help you > Sales interaction > Restock

If you find it hard to do all three, have one employee cover the rest. I find it most helpful to have someone be cashier, as restocking/sales are less "do it now or I'm going to get pissy and give you minus stars!"-prone.

Okay that makes more sense, in the Toy shop, there were these expensive deco masks that came with the building and to get rid of it I se it for sale it was set on cheap but still like 1,000, the sims were more interested in those than the $25 toys.

And you guys are right, i should just keep one,
Im gonna play tonight and see how it goes using these helpful tips

OFB is my favorite EP of all.

A few things you can do without firing an employee and get a negative is...........
1. If the employee is a playable sims, enter his home lot and have him call and quit his job. The one time I did this, I'm pretty sure it did not give the business a negative.
2. Send extra employees home for the day. Doing this gives you a couple of options.
A. As the business day goes along and the needs of the employee working starts to go down, call in the employee you sent home and then send home the working tired employee.
B. Keep sending them home until you can afford to pay them.

I, too cheat, sometimes. I have the sim blender and I teleport customers. You can make them selectable, have them buy things, then make them unselectable again, and then teleport them back. Just make sure they have the household funds to afford whatever they are buying.

One thing that I find works well is to have businesses run by the family. If it's too big for one person to handle, go ahead and hire an employee or two - but only call them in when you absolutely need them. They'll be there when you visit the businesses with your other families, and will get paid (and build badges!), but when you're seriously playing the business, the family can handle them just fine without calling in the employees at all. And that's when you'll be building the stars.

I'm a patient player, so it doesn't bug me that it's taking awhile for my businesses to rise in level. The fastest rise has been Junior Mann's acquisition of The General Store. Junior comes from a wealthy family and has a point to make; he doesn't have to make money on the store or even meet expenses, as long as he gets it to level 10 and makes his point. He's hired two employees, but not at the same time: his lover, and a neighbor kid with whom he was friendly after she quit "to look after their baby." (If you ever play Widespot you'll understand what those quotes are about; otherwise it's not germane.) He overpaid both absurdly, and only ever calls them in when I'm playing him if he has no other options. His elderly parents can man the register just fine; and most days he can handle the store alone. He's sometimes too tired to restock; but he doesn't have to open the store every time he goes in. He can go home, rest, and come back long enough to restock.

The two businesses owned by the Casa family, Lily's House of Transformation (owned by the daughter-in-law) and Casa de los Widgets are team projects. Lily did have a teen helper at one time, and hired a sorority sister to tide her over while she looked for the job she wanted; but most Lily and her husband go in every day. Lily does makeovers and sales; Emilio mans the register and cleans; both restock - and they get some much-needed alone time away from his parents. Patriarch Esteban Casa used to take his youngest son Miguelito in to learn the ropes while he was a teen, but since he left for college he'll man the register, clean, and restock while his wife does customer service. (Esteban is the grouchiest man in Drama Acres and completely sucks at customer service, even now that he's got a gold sales badge.)

Having a high-nice-point salesman to deal with the customers, I find, matters a lot. Nothing generates stars like a Nice dazzle.

All the businesses described above are at level 7 or 8, I'm not quite sure which, and they'll get to level 10 in time. It's just a matter of pacing myself running them. They have break rooms with coffee and snacks, so I can deal with urgent need-drops, and they started small and have added on. And the businesses are right next door to each other. If the old folks overextend themselves, Emilio and Lily can run next door and restock Casa de los Widgets, so they'll still have stock when I send playables to buy computers and burglar alarms.

If you don't mind a little "cheating" there are a few objects that can really speed up the development of a business.

On the website http://www.simwardrobe.com/
if you go to Sims2/Objects/Business Facilitators

you can find a few very awesome stuff. I personally used it for a sim that I didn't really play, but had to create to make Shops that NPC community lots wouldn't work.
The "Employee Car Restoration" thing got an error for me after I've send the tired sim home. But the Customer Limit Adjuster works just fine, and it's the best combined with the ticket machine. Having 15 or more customers allowed on your lot skyrockets the loyalty stars and the profit.

Businesses that sell crafted items are a pain, because on top of the selling you also have to craft the items for sale. It's much easier to sell things found in buy mode. But yeah, retail businesses will generally gain stars faster than venues, and you really don't need a ton of employees. Keep it simple. Alternate between different tasks, so you don't have a situation where only one sim has a cashier badge, and then if that one's not available you're stuck with someone who's useless at cashiering when maybe your business is high level and you've got a lot of customers. Strictly speaking, you don't even need to do any sales interactions as long as your items are set to average or lower, because customers will buy on their own - it just takes a bit longer, but then you can use that time for restocking or taking care of your sims' needs. Just always help those who look clueless with the "May I Help You?" because it's almost a guaranteed gold star if you do, and you risk a red star if you don't.

If you're going to do long stints at the business, make sure you have all the necessities in a break room (locked to the public, of course). Toilet, shower, fridge (small one will do), counter, dishwasher (not necessary, but saves a lot of hassle) and an espresso machine to gain energy. Oh, and a place to sit.

Maybe you know this already, but you can send one sim to the business, then have him/her call in other family members one by one over the phone. This means you can have everyone old enough to work at the business, without worrying about hiring a nanny for the kids. Also, the needs of those who get called in that way will reset to what they were when you left, when you go home. But don't "invite household" or say they can bring a friend, or they'll show up as non-controllable.

If you're looking for an easy way to get a top level business, make it a venue and send a sim who can meditate there, set your sim to meditating, hit speed three, and walk away from the computer. (You may want to check in once in a while.) Just don't have any trees on the lot, because if they get struck by lightning and start burning, your sim will be pulled out of meditation, and needs will start to go down. This is not really a fun way to play businesses, but if you've got a sim who wants five, you're sick of it after getting three businesses to top level, but don't want to cheat...

The only business I ever made a lot of money from was a venue, where I used a ridiculously high custom price, 400 simoleons an hour. In order to sell tickets, I had to dazzle like crazy. Brought home on average between 20,000 to 50,000 a night.

I lve open for business, it's my favorite expansion and one I couldnt live without, but the designers were kidding themselves if they thought any type of business in the game could replace rabbithole jobs. Employee wages eat up much of your profits, as does restocking, and it takes for fucking ever for sims to decide to buy something and they almost always pick the cheapest items, in the four hours they take to decide on it. In the meantime, your useless employees who only do their jobs when they're ridiculously over paid often succeed in just annoying or outright pissing your customers off, and once they do buy, if you weren't lucky enough to find a gold badge cash register sim, to watch them get more annoyed as your cashier, hunts and pecks for 3 hours to ring them up, while taking them almost an entire lifetime to learn the goddamned thing. After which you made an incredible 200 simloeons on a sale but had to spend 150 on your worthless employees during that time, then whatever price it takes to restock that item.

Sure, there are mods to make people buy faster, learn registers faster. But some people dont want to use mods. So for them, running a vanilla business is an operation in frustrating hair pulling futility, where even a level ten business with happy loyal customers still hemmorages money. That the only way to make money in a business is by those grant business perks, but those only happen once. Not per business, just once. I thought that I would game the system. Start a business and operate it til it's level ten using up all the grants, then sell it for an amazing profit then do the same for the next one. Only to find that those perks carry over. They don't reset ever, even after passing them on, or selling the business.

You can easily have a level ten business. Customer loyalty isnt that hard to get. Is running a successful business that makes you well off thats the bitch of it. I'm sure there are those who could have both. I have just never been one of them. Not without mods and unrealistic practices.

I also hate that you have to have a certain relationship level with a sim before hiring them. In every business on that first day, there are people who show up and hang around despite the sign showing it's closed. I decided rather than get annoyed, I would look at them as job seekers and get a rapport going, then ask their skills. Treat it like a job interview. Sometimes that worked and sometimes it didnt go well. And if the topic got a bad reaction, it would affect the business.

Sims with home businesses get the option to hire at all times, but sims who own community lots only have the option while on the lot. Another shitty disadvantage. If I needed to find a good server, I would go to a gym and wait for someone to use a machine and gauge their skill level by how they use it, and if they have high skill, I'll greet and begin a conversation, until it goes well enough to form a group for fun, then bring them to the business and hire them.

It shouldnt have to be that damned complicated.

Agreed with the others. You need to start small. I start businesses with just one or two sims, the owner and perhaps his/her spouse or a friend. Often the business is funded by the owner's "day job" or their spouse works or they have a lot of capital to start with - around 10-20k, but it is possible to start with practically nothing.

So, you need a small shop which doesn't have too many items. The owner can man the cash register when there's a queue, restock when there isn't, and make sales when they get a chance. Or leave the restocking for after hours and just close the business when everything is sold. In the real world, you'd have to keep a business open at set times so people knew when to come, but this doesn't apply in the sims. Creating items, painting, cooking etc needs to be done when the business is closed.

As you make more money, buy more items to sell. When you're consistently getting queues so long you can't do everything at once, or people are complaining because the items are out of stock more quickly than you can restock them and serve on the tills, it's time to hire an employee. I usually use the phone as it's the quickest way, you don't need to build any relationship, you just pick whoever is available. Get the hack at MATY which stops employees from demanding high salaries for irrelevant skills, and only look at the relevant badges. Generally the first employee I hire is a till monkey. They will be slow at first but they soon speed up, and meanwhile your business owner can be making sales and restocking or crafting items. However, your employees will perform better if you have a high relationship with them, so perhaps the "interview" technique is a good idea.

A ticket machine type is also possible to run on a small scale. Just set the price low and increase it as people seem happier. Again you don't need any employees to start. This type is quite boring to play though unless you have the money to buy a ready made lot or build something impressive before you start.

Restaurants, don't even attempt unless you have a lot of financial buffer. You need 2+ staff just to get this thing off the ground and some expensive equipment and the room for it.

If your business is working where it is, keep it there rather than pushing it to the max. Staying at a stable position for a while allows you to build up some funds before expanding, which is always a good idea. You shouldn't hire staff when your funds are low.

Personally I never use employees for my businesses. One sim can do it themselves even with a level 10 business (provided it is quite small). You can use a couple or teen children if you want more sims.

I suggest using aspiration rewards to keep the sims green, at least while you learn the ropes. A couple is a good place to start.
Retail businesses are the easiest to start out with and other than the original cost of the premesis your sims won't lose money unless they hire employees (which isn't necessary either).
Your main focus should be the till and the 'may I help you interaction" then needs, restocking and sales. If the stock gets too low you can always close the shop to restock everything. I've never had much problem selling stuff for average to start with but selling stuff for cheap may help you get started.
Stick with it, it takes time but if you're losing money on employees chances are you don't need them.

Well, you can have one sim doing everything but if it's a community lot business and you want sims to visit it occasionally then you need someone in each role you want them to appear in when you take another sim to visit.

It's all about making the costumers happy, just like in the real world: success won't come at you in the first try.

Just keep your sim getting talent badges in selling, being able to handle the cash register and try to be nice to your costumers, give them compliments and talk some with them. Always if I can afford it I give my workers/employees higher wages, don't know if that actually helps but I find it really nice to give them a few bucks extra.

Just hang in there, keep making your costumers happy and you will eventually reach level 10.

To play devil's advocate for a moment; there are lots of ways you can play businesses with tons of employees and still make a profit. My playstyle is geared towards creating a self-sufficient, interlocking hood, so "job creation" is actually one of my goals when I run a business. The largest business I ever ran (in a previous version of Heimlichbourg) was Walton Fishmongers. This was before I knew about about simwardrobe's fish packing station, but I still wanted my fisherman sim to open a business, so I simply had him process his fish into group meals and then sell them in the OFB cooler. Since there was no overhead (no initial crafting cost, no catalouge restocking cost) it was actually a highly profitable business. Better still, it provided something I was happy to have my playables buy; when I played another family, I was delighted to find a bunch of delicious ready to eat meals that could wipe our the whole family's hunger bar instantly- it saved time and added a sense of flavor to the hood. It was certainly more fun than moving to the next family and finding that they have no money because they bought three sports cars

That low overhead, high profit business model meant that I could really pile on the employees; I had a cashier, a restocker, and three cooks, one for each type of fish, and the owner acted as the salesman. The Walton family lot was a home business so that all their fish would land in the inventory of their pater familias, who would then take it into the shop to be processed and sold. That one business supported a whole little village- five employee families and the noble family that owned the place, plus another family that ran the Fat Cannibal, a dockside bar that catered to the fisherman and their families If you stick with it and aren't afraid of micromanaging, you can run and whole industry in the sims 2.

edit: also, I didn't use cheats- and my definition of cheating is spectacularly broad and includes business cash rewards and aspiration reward items like the energizer.

Yes fish is free, but the OP is playing the Blue Water furniture store and has to purchase her stock. She wanted to know how to make that profitable.

Oh, I know, and I hit agree on your advice; I was just touching on a related issue, since the consensus on this thread so far seems to be that minimizing employees is key, I was describing a situation where that isn't true.

You can do the same for produce, but everything else costs money, plus it can be argued that produce and fish cost time.

Actually on second thought even produce takes more money as you need fruit tress (expensive) garden plots and compost bins/or fertilizer.

* Running off to download the Simlogical cash register*
Have a mom and pop bakery along with a teen to help (in-home business). Never achieved a level 10 business.

If one has a Sim that is ultra rich (maximum amount of money the game will allow, achieved via the motherlode cheat) who owns a chain of large one stop shopping stores, and money is no object starting out, will business pick up, as the ranking increases, enough to have a full staff AND profit in such large establishments? Additionally, the employees are (supposedly) unionized, so the company can't/won't replace humans with machines.

So I took some advice, I played Florence Delarosa's flower shop
I fired her employee and she was able to handle everything pretty well even being prego
So she made about 1,000 and spent 800 in restocking i believe
so not bad, shes a level 2 from previously -1
everything was set to cheap and a couple average which they also bought, I used basic sell once and they practically cleaned up the shop

I did download simlogical's automatic cash register but I figured I'd save that for more harder businesses
she did gain a bronze in the register

I'm going to try playing the Tinker's toy shop and using the same methods and see if I can't help them
I have not started on Malcom Landgrab's businesses,
I find it funny how he's supposed to be super rich but starts off with barely no money as if he's supposed to build a fortune from his businesses but I know from earlier experience its not that easy, I had to use family funds just to keep him alive.
This time I gave him a ton of money, to help boost him businesses in hopes they will be easier to handle . . .

I'll have to see
And I love all the good advice :lovestruc