Business and Hobbies

LynArts07​ Oh no... I had always used my small business pack to run a home business and had not noticed there was an option to make a business a 'small business venue'. I apologize. Today I tested in my game and found several nuances of what it took for my sim to run her business off-lot (not on her home/residential lot) that may be of use to mention.

• Make or add a lot in your game that has the 'small business venue' lot type. No other lot type but the small business or residential lot type will work for running your small business. If you run it from a residential lot you will need to add the open/closed sign from the small business pack and will need to own a small business.  [Having a sim who owns a small business will make your residential lot show as a small business residential (small business) lot in live mode and in world view.]
  
• Have your sim 'own' a small business, which I assume you already have done.
• Have your sim use the 'buy a small business lot' interaction on their phone, then choose the small business venue you added. (See the pics Crinrict added to her post/comment... sorry if any of this is redundant to what she posted.)
• Make sure all of the rooms and areas on the small business lot are designated as 'public' (mine were residential by default), and that you have a business sign on the lot (the one that comes with the pack that you can click on to open or close the business).
• Go back home. Now , in your 'small business' interface, make sure that you have designated your small business venue for your business and click the check-mark button to save this. (See the pic of this from Crinrict's post/comment.)
• If you do not check the home lot in the assigned lot setting you will not be able to see an open button available until you get to the business lot, not that it matters since it seems the only location that opens is the lot where your sim is physically present.
• If you check both boxes (including your residence) you can open the store from your home lot, but if you do this the customers will only come to your home lot, not to the business. (and they will go to all areas of your home lot not designated specifically as residential.) I found that I had to have my sim physically travel to the business for the customers to show up at the small business venue.
• Also, she could not run her small business as a residential small business through a residential lot that she did not currently live in.

I hope something in this testing may cover an aspect that has been making it not work right for you. Let me know if you need it tested further. 

Im on Xbox so I cant access files. I dont receive any pop-ups stating issues in game either :/

Hi LynArts07​ 

Do you have any LastException files in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4 ?

• Delete the ones you have
• Trigger the error again
• Check if new ones are created
• If that is the case, please copy/paste the content here. You can open the file with any text editor.

Deleting the file won't fix your issue. Posting the info is meant for troubleshooting. 

Yes, I have. It gives me the option to open but no matter how many times I click it or the que object to open it just never does.  😔

Hi LynArts07​ 

have you tried buying a small business lot and then registering your business to that lot ? You need to have a small business lot in your world to buy of course.

This way you can either assign the business to just the small business  venue or also to your residential lot if you choose too.

Your residential lot will then show as small business (residential) but you can make the complete house residential and you can't really open the business if it's not assigned

I might be misunderstanding what you are trying to do but you can have off lot small business venues.

LynArts07​ I'm sorry the pack is working differently than you expected. I also enjoy having certain sims run a business of one type or another. For me, though, my favorite way to do this was in the options that came with Business and Hobbies - probably because I am a big fan of running as much as possible on my sim's home lot, and I play with large, busy households. That's just my favorite way to play.

I have felt that most things in a 'Business and Hobbies' business seem to run more smoothly/easily than the retail store that came with 'Get to Work'. However, if you have your heart set on owning and running a business off-lot, you may want to consider adding 'Get to Work' (for the ability to own and run off-lot retail stores) or 'Dine Out' (if you want to own and run a restaurant on a lot you don't live on). I actually overlap some of the items from all three packs sometimes, depending on my goals on a lot and how each thing functions in another context (which requires testing to see if an item will work on a different type of lot).

I hope you will find there are ways of using the pack you purchased to run a business on your home lot in a manner that you enjoy in the end.