"This is Ivy Copur here. I am Zoltan's girlfriend and I'm still waiting for him to make an honest women out of me. He's currently working out the back of the house building us a new cleanbot. Zoltan told me about the florists and told me to buy the deed from our joint account. That way, I would get the deeds to the store. He thought it was a romantic gesture. Bless him, he's trying. Very trying. What he doesn't yet understand is how hard it is to run a business that sells goods.

"I planned to make bouquets while the customers are looking around the store. However, this did not work too well. I kept having to break off to operate the register, then replace the stock that the customers had bought and perhaps encourage hesitant customers to buy something. I guess I should hire some employees. I nearly got caught short on my first day. I made the bathroom just in time, otherwise I think I would have emptied the store in ten seconds flat with a plummet in environment levels.

"On the next day, I brought Zoltan in with me. He dressed for the part and spent a lot of his time making daisy bouquets while I attended to the general running of the store. Zoltan is really good at making bouquets and by the end of the day, he had already moved up to wildflower displays. He hoped his fellow "legitimate businessmen" would not hear about it. I suppose it is too late now.

"I did make one major mistake. I lost my temper with one of the customers who was being really obnoxious. Suddenly, she pulled out a notebook and started writing. I realised then that she was from the local newspaper. Her parting words was that she was going to put in a negative review of the store. I'd say what I would do to that journalistic hack but I think children could be reading."

As Ivy bought the store, she becomes the owner and she gets the deeds added immediately to her inventory. Once the deeds are put up in a store, it can start to function as one.

Deeds can be sold. In fact, buying and selling deeds can be a lucrative business in its own right. Buy up cheap property, smarten it up and then sell it on for a profit.

Found as a button in the top right corner of the screen when you are on a commercial or home business lot, this can be maximised to give you a lot of information about your business.
- It shows your business rating. This goes from 10 indicating you are a natural at running a business empire down to -5 which effectively shouts out that you should not have given up your day job. By default, it starts as "0". Following the bad second day, Ivy's rating has dropped to "-1". In another part of Regras Gorge.
- It shows your employee details. It shows their name, skills, talent badges and hourly wage. Double-clicking on their picture centres the camera on them.
- It shows your cash flow over the past week and you find the profit/loss your company is running at. This is a way of analysing what works and what doesn't.
- It shows your customers and from this, you can find out their loyalty or disloyalty. These people are crucial to your continued success. A few well-placed telephone calls or invites should not hurt. If they have a shopping trolley in the bottom corner of their picture, it means that they are on the premises. Double-clicking on them will centre the camera on them. A very useful feature. Now why can't Maxis allow us to double-click and centre on all visitors to non-business properties from the relationships list?
- It also allows you to mark an item for sale and to set its pricing. It also allows you to toggle whether you are buying wholesale or just from the catalogue. Pricing is important. Too high and you have no customers. Too low and your shelves are empty, the queue to your till is long and your customers are complaining about the bad service.
- Also, it points out what business perks you have and what you are entitled to. These perks help you up in different areas of business management. The higher the level of your business, the more perks you will get.

We will look in detail at some of what these represent and how Ivy and Zoltan could perhaps improve their business.