To start a business in The Sims 4 you need the Businesses and Hobbies expansion, then in Live Mode you open the Owned Businesses tab (the cash register icon in the bottom right) and select Register Small Business; the same option sits in the phone’s Business app and under the Small Business category on any computer. Registration costs a few Simoleons and opens a setup menu where you name the business, pick activities and target customers, and decide whether it runs from home or from a Business Venue Lot. This guide covers that setup, the three kinds of lot you can trade from, ticket kiosks and pricing, hiring and paying employees, and how Renown and Perks turn a hobby into a proper income.
Everything below is verified against EA’s official Small Business help article and the patch notes through the September 22, 2026 update (PC 1.128.90.1030). The expansion launched on March 6, 2025 for PC, Mac, PlayStation and Xbox, so console players get the same system through the controller’s Live Mode menus.
Registering your Small Business
Pick any of the three entry points and choose Register Small Business. The menu that follows lets you:
- Name the business, write a description and pick a logo.
- Choose up to five Business Activities, which encourage visiting Sims to do particular things. For a shop, select Browse and Buy Items.
- Choose Target Customers by Age, Career, Marital Status, Financial Status, Traits, Skill Level, Occult, or Supervised Customer, marked Required or Preferred. Required narrows who can visit, and the game warns you if the criteria are too strict.
- Set the Entrance Fee (only if the lot has a ticket kiosk) and the Price Modifier markup.
- Set the Business Lot Assignment to your home or to a Business Venue Lot you already own.
If you would rather skip those choices, pick a Business Preset: Bar, Gym, Library, Lounge, Museum, Nightclub, Park, Pool, Pottery Studio, Shop or Tattoo Parlor, plus lot-type presets from other packs. Presets can be edited and saved as your own.
Where the business lives
Per the developer, a Small Business can run from three kinds of lot:
- A Small Business Residential Lot, meaning your Sim’s own home.
- A Business Venue Lot, bought furnished or unfurnished through the phone or computer. Households can own several, and to buy one from the Owned Businesses tab you need to have registered a business first.
- An existing Community Lot such as a bar, spa or gym, where you drop a ticket kiosk and charge for entry.
Any household member can open their business on a lot, but only one business can be open at a time. In Build Mode, rooms appear with outlines so you can zone them Residential (no customers or employees), Public (everyone), or Employees Only; Residential zoning only exists on home-business lots. Retail Surfaces and display walls, which put anything placed on them up for sale, are under Objects by Function > Small Business in Build/Buy. If you are building the venue from scratch, our guide on how to build a house in Sims 4 covers the basics.
Ticket kiosks, fees and markup
The ticket kiosk lives under Appliances in Build Mode and lets a business with no product still earn: a gallery, a pool, a lecture hall. It has three modes: Hourly, One-time, or Disabled, where customers pay only for services and items. The base Entrance Fee is set by the game and rises with Renown. You cannot type a price, but selecting the kiosk and choosing Price Modifier applies -50%, -25%, +0%, +50% or +100%, and that modifier also scales what your goods and services sell for.
Service businesses run on tended objects: the owner or an employee works the bar, the tattoo table or the pottery wheel and customers pay for the result. Our Sims 4 tattooing skill guide covers levelling the pack’s headline skill before you open a parlor.
Hiring, paying and tasking employees
A Small Business can employ up to three Sims besides the owner: friends, family, or any Teen-or-older Sim your owner knows. Other household members can still be told to do business tasks. To hire, open the Owned Businesses tab, choose Manage Employees, then Select a Sim to Hire, or use the Hire for [business name] social on the Sim directly. Firing works the same way (Fire Employee, or the Fire from [business name] social) and costs relationship with that Sim.
Pay is hourly and set per employee under Manage Pay as Low, Medium or High. Per EA, low pay raises the chance of a Bitter sentiment and erodes the employee’s relationship with the owner every shift; high pay does the opposite with a Motivating sentiment; medium can go either way. Let the relationship stay low too long and the employee quits. Give each employee up to five tasks through Manage Employee Tasks and the + icon under their portrait, and they work through them when their shift starts.
Renown, Perks and the daily summary
Customer satisfaction builds Renown, and Renown earns Perk Points to spend on Small Business Perks in three trees: Neutral, Dreamer and Schemer. You can mix trees or commit to one, and the resulting Alignment changes how customers and some personal relationships react. Per the store description, the new Idealist trait suits Dreamer businesses and Shady Sims suit Schemer play; see our guide to the best Sims 4 traits. Closing for the day produces a summary of what went well and what to fix.
Two post-launch changes are worth knowing. The July 21, 2026 update removed the Sugary Cravings pop-up and other Businesses and Hobbies notifications, and added a toggle for Nordhaven Hobby Meetups. The September 18, 2025 patch fixed the Entrepreneurial trait causing sudden career-level jumps. For the other ways to earn, see how to make money fast in Sims 4; every Sims guide we publish is listed on the Sims hub.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need Get to Work to run a store? No. Get to Work’s retail system still exists, but Businesses and Hobbies has its own Small Business system with Retail Surfaces, and the two are separate features.
Can I run more than one business? A household can own multiple Business Venue Lots, but only one business can be open at any one time.
How do I raise prices? Select the ticket kiosk and choose Price Modifier. The options are -50%, -25%, +0%, +50% and +100%, and the modifier applies to entry fees, goods and services together.
Can console players use this? Yes. The expansion is sold for PlayStation and Xbox as well as PC and Mac, with the same menus.
Why did my employee quit? Their relationship with the owner dropped too low for too long, which low pay accelerates every shift. Raise pay to Medium or High and socialise with them.