Frequently asked questions

No. Opening Hours and Profit Planner inputs stay in your browser memory for the active page and are cleared when you reload or leave the page. Umami receives page-view and performance data, not planner field values or calculation results.

If you want to keep a scenario, save the values somewhere you control. Read the Privacy page for the full explanation.

There isn’t one magic answer for every save. A gift shop is a pretty friendly first business because it teaches the basic retail loop: buy stock, place shelves, schedule staff, watch demand, and adjust prices. A clothing store or supermarket can also work once you understand the same basics.

Pick a location you can afford, keep your opening hours realistic, and check what customers actually want before you sink all your cash into furniture. Your first goal is learning the loop without running out of money, not chasing a perfect tier-list pick.

Source notes: Big Ambitions Wiki FAQ and the official Steam page.

Early on, the safest money-making loop is simple: work a job to build a cash cushion, open a business you can actually manage, keep it stocked, and reinvest the profit into the next useful upgrade.

Watch customer satisfaction, product demand, wages, and inventory instead of blindly raising prices. If the business is losing money, find the bottleneck first. Buying a nicer car or apartment feels good, but it can wait until your operating cash is healthy.

Source notes: Big Ambitions Wiki FAQ and the official Steam page.

The unmodified game is single-player. Steam lists Big Ambitions as a single-player title, so you manage your New York businesses on your own in the base game.

You may see community projects that change the experience, but treat those as mods with their own compatibility and support limits. Check the mod page and the game version before building a save around one.

Source notes: Steam features for Big Ambitions and the community FAQ.

For a new location, renting is usually the less stressful choice. It keeps cash available for inventory, equipment, wages, and the occasional surprise bill.

Buying can make more sense later, when your businesses produce steady recurring profit and you can still cover payroll and stock after the purchase. Don’t let the word “ownership” trick you into starving the business that pays your bills.

Source note: Big Ambitions Wiki FAQ. Treat this as a planning rule, not a universal law for every save.

A warehouse starts paying for itself in convenience when manually restocking several stores becomes a daily chore. Before that point, it can be extra rent, extra equipment, and extra logistics to babysit.

Think of the warehouse as a buffer between incoming goods and your businesses. Plan the storage, vehicles, drivers, and delivery rules together. A warehouse by itself does not magically move products or fix a weak purchasing plan.

Source notes: Big Ambitions Wiki FAQ and the warehouse and delivery guide.

Start with the boring checklist. You need a warehouse business with usable storage, a vehicle assigned to the warehouse, an eligible driver, a headquarters workstation for the Logistics Manager, and a destination route with a sensible stock target.

Then check the flow in order: did the goods arrive, is the item allowed at the destination, is there free shelf space, and does the route have enough capacity? Fix the first broken link instead of changing every setting at once.

Source notes: the official Steam page and the warehouse and delivery guide.

The short version is: sign a dock contract, assign a Purchasing Agent, choose the goods and destination warehouse, then make sure a truck and driver can collect the shipment. After the stock reaches your warehouse, your logistics setup can move it to the businesses that need it.

The important bit many new players miss is the dock-to-warehouse leg. Signing a contract does not mean the products teleport to your shelves. Keep an eye on the order status, warehouse capacity, cash, and transport setup.

Source notes: the official Steam page and the community trading guide.

Check the chain from the beginning. Was the order actually activated? Did you choose a destination warehouse? Did you have enough cash and free pallet space when the order processed? Did the order meet the importer’s minimum or get blocked by a backorder?

If the goods reached the warehouse, move to the next link: Logistics Manager schedule, warehouse connection, vehicle, driver, route destination, stock target, product eligibility, and shelf space. Troubleshooting in this order saves a lot of random clicking.

Source notes: the warehouse troubleshooting guide and the trading guide.

Nope—not automatically. Some businesses can run profitably around the clock, but that does not make 24/7 the best schedule for every location or save.

Look at hourly customer traffic, then subtract the costs that appear when you stay open: wages, stock, cleaning, security, and any operating problems. Test the edge hours in your current neighborhood instead of copying a universal timetable from an old guide.

Source note: the opening-hours research guide. It also recommends checking the current save and build before treating a schedule as a rule.

A practical starting point is the business view in BizMan: open the business, go to Insights, and inspect the customer graph for recent activity such as Yesterday. Use that graph as evidence, not as a forever-perfect schedule.

Write down the business, weekday, neighborhood, build, and hours you tested. If an hour shows zero customers, first check staff, stations, stock, queues, capacity, and access before deciding that demand is actually zero.

Source note: the opening-hours research guide. UI labels can move between updates, so confirm the current screen in your save.

Yes. Big Ambitions supports Steam Workshop content, including mods and blueprints. The official team introduced integrated mod support and an in-game uploader before the 1.0 release.

Mods can change the rules of your save, so read the compatibility notes and required dependencies after major updates. Keep a clean backup before adding anything that changes gameplay or data.

Source notes: official Steam announcements and the Steam store page.