You can click on the column headers in any message listing to sort conversations by subject or date.
Need more detail in a Sales Forecast? Want to track a number of different Milestones? No problem. Most tables with data-entry areas allow you to insert new rows, which you can name and format.
Right now, investors are holding things very close to the vest. if you’re writing a business plan seeking investment funding, you must make your case well, with a solid pitch backed by a full understanding of the business’ prospects, financials, and cash projections.
First, all investors want to see right away how much money you need, how it will be used, what return on investment they will receive, and when they will get it.
Professional investors (venture capitalists) will also want to see an exit strategy, when their shares are bought out or the company goes public.
If you are seeking investment from friends and family (which we don’t necessarily recommend), remember that spelling out who owns how much of the business, who has the final say on all business decisions, and what happens if the business fails, are crucial to maintaining good relations with your investors. Investment is always a risk.
Tables
Your Start-up Funding (for start-ups) and Cash Flow tables show where new investment comes into the business. The Cash Flow table has a line for after-tax Dividends that will be paid to investors.
Long Term table can show projected growth and equity for up to 10 years, although forecasts, of course, become less reliable as you get further out.
Topics
Essentials of the investment offering — how much money for how much ownership — should show up in the Executive Summary. Additional topics should cover the Exit Strategy, Valuation, and Shares of Stock. Many plans will include a section on Risks and Contingencies. Put this in your Financial topics, or click Topic on the Insert menu to add as many new topics to the plan Outline as necessary to spell out the details. Users with the Premier Edition can put this information in the topics surrounding their investment tables.
Remember, however, that investors don’t invest in plans – they invest in people. Make sure you understand the numbers, and can back them up with real research. Your plan should reflect the commitment, energy, and hard work behind your entrepreneurial drive.
Some calculations in Business Plan Pro may produce results that appear to be incorrect by very small amounts. This apparent discrepancy occurs when the software rounds numbers up or down to fit the cell formatting (decimals) chosen for each cell. In some cases, this can even trigger a Plan Review warning for a table that appears to be fine.
In Business Plan Pro 11.0, you can prevent rounding from affecting your printed plan by using the Precision as Displayed option. This option forces the value of each number in the worksheet to match the displayed value. To turn on this option, follow these steps:
NOTE: This setting permanently changes the values in your tables to match the decimal settings in your table cells.
The Starting Date for your business plan is somewhat arbitrary, especially if you’re a start-up. It could be the day you first start writing your business plan, the day you open for business (or begin a planned expansion), or anytime in between.
In general, a new business should set the starting date on or before the day they first pay employees a regular salary or generate sales. So, if today is January 10th, and you plan a Grand Opening for March 1st, you could set the starting date for January, February or March. This means you may have some time in your plan where you have to pay expenses, but have no income, as when you train new employees. This is typical for a start-up, and should be budgeted for ahead of time when you think about the cash needed at start-up.
For a new business, the starting date may help you separate the “start-up period,” in which you plan, obtain funding, buy any necessary inventory, and interview potential employees, from the “opening of the business,” when you have to start paying your employees, and begin receiving sales income.
For an ongoing business, try setting the starting date to match your current fiscal year cycle; this will help with your accounting, later. Alternatively, you could set the plan starting date for the launch of a new product, an expansion, or a major business milestone, like handing the family business down to the next generation.
While it’s tempting to improve the projected profits in your business plan by listing the owner’s payment as dividends in the Cash Flow table, it also means that these payments may exist only as that – numbers in a business plan, not money in the bank to pay your mortgage, buy groceries, etc.
Would you accept a job offer that listed your pay as “to be determined”?
If you’re serious about your business, and about your own efforts, don’t forget to pay yourself for your work. Put your expected salary in the Personnel table, and see what this does to your profits and, more importantly, your cash balance. If you are counting on that income to support yourself so you can keep running this new business, it needs to be in the financials, just like a regular employee’s would be.
Note also that doing this feeds into the automatic calculation of “Payroll taxes” in the Profit and Loss. As a sole proprietor you will end up paying something similar to employer payroll taxes at the end of the year when you do your taxes, because you will have to pay a self-employment tax, so it’s a good idea to take that into account in your plan.
Your accountant may have you listing these items differently for tax purposes; that’s okay. Remember that this is planning, not accounting, and we’re thinking in broad terms, trying to estimate the future. Shouldn’t getting paid be part of your business future?
Want to quickly find that message from yesterday that came in with an attachment? How about the one where you wrote a note?
Email Center Pro lists this information in visual format, right next to each message in a list. Just scan down the message listing to find the icon you’re looking for:
Happy New Year! As an entrepreneur, one of your resolutions should be to revisit and renew your business plan for a new year. The Premier Edition of Business Plan Pro includes a great little feature to get you started.
On the File menu, click Archive and Roll Forward
A copy of your old plan is now Archived for safekeeping, and the financial data has rolled forward one year. This means:
* NOTE: If your original plan was set for two years of detailed monthly forecasts, the second year monthlies retain their original value, for you to manually type over.
Before you go forward, take a look at the data in the Past Performance table. Is it accurate? The planned tables include only your original forecasts, not actual results from your real business operations. Where your plan differs from accounting data for the previous year, type in your correct past results.
You’re now ready to start planning your new business milestones and budgets, based on the insights you’ve gained over the past year. You probably don’t need to review every section of your plan – has the business moved, or changed owners? – but make sure to walk through all of the financial tables and, of course, the Milestones. And don’t forget to distribute your plan! You may not need to send it to investors, but your managers and anyone else who is affected by changes in the next year’s budgets, goals, marketing strategy, etc., need to know that your business plan is an ongoing process, and that their active participation is required.
Like to work in spreadsheets, but want the speed and ease of automatically filling in related columns or rows? Business Plan Pro has a shortcut for you:
You can find more tips like this by searching on “Spreadsheets” in your built-in Help.
Planning to submit your business plan or pitch electronically? Don’t miss all the built-in tools for high-powered hyperlinked plan support:
Instead of attaching images of your company website, use a hyperlink to the site itself to get readers immersed in your online presence.
While your content is the most important part of the business plan, online submission means a color plan costs the same as a black and white one. Consider some of these options:
Tables
Charts
Ready to send it in? Business Plan Pro supports multiple export formats to present your plan the way reviewers want to see it.
You can now attach the exported files to an email, transfer them via ftp, put them on your website, or burn them to CD for submission.
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