What is the best business plan software to use?
My husband and I are creating our business plan and we want to know what is the best software for us to use?
Other than the SBA and SCORE, what are some practical tools we can use to build our business plan? We have heard of Palo Alto’s “Business Plan Pro”, is there anything better out there?
July 7th, 2010 at 5:29 am
I don’t recommend anything other then a good word processor. There is no need to purchase software specifically to write the plan.
Resources showing what a plan should look like are avaiable at the SBA and Score as you mention, after that using a good word processor should be all you need.
July 7th, 2010 at 7:51 am
I think it just requires some research beforehand to find the type of software that’s best suited to your business as well as your price range. I recently came across an online business plan tool for startups and small businesses called BusinessPlanWiz – http://www.businessplanwiz.com
July 7th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
You may want to add some financials to your plan. Therefore, a business planning software may still be helpful. Try iPlanner.NET
July 9th, 2010 at 9:10 am
No, there isn’t anything better. I’m very biased because I’m the author of Business Plan Pro, but that doesn’t mean what I’m saying isn’t also true. It’s a tool intended to help you do the mechanics, like the financial math and the formatting, with a lot of help and examples, and a lot of respect for flexibility and your own content. It doesn’t write your words or do your numbers, but it does help you do your own by managing the outlining and formatting. It’s completely flexible, so you can add or delete any outline topic. And the financials are productized and supported but also true to generally accepted financial principles and focused on cash flow, flexible down to how many days you wait to get paid and how much inventory (if any) you need to keep in stock.
And sure, you can do a good business plan without Business Plan Pro, like one of your commenters says above; but is that where you want to save money? Take the spreadsheet: if you know finance and spreadsheets you can do your own, but how many hours does that take, how much error checking do you have to go through, and how much is your time worth?
Business Plan Pro is a tool. It works. It lets you do your own plan, and it respects the idea that every plan is unique. And it is the standard in the market because it works very well, it’s priced fairly, and it’s supported by a company with 40-some employees, a focus on business planning, and a 20-year history.