Writing your Business Plan

Your business plan should be concise and neatly formatted. We suggest a Microsoft Word document for the bulk of the business plan, with financial documents as attached or embedded spreadsheets created in Microsoft Excel. Avoid fancy graphics, flowery language or photos. The easier you make it to read for a potential investor or partner, the better.

If you are the type of person who works better with templates and wizards, there are many business planning software packages available that cost around $100, as well as a few free online business plan templates.

The advantage to using business planning software is that it offers a step-by-step approach to the process (similar to a “wizard”), and can include sample business plans for specific types of businesses (e.g. restaurants, manufacturing, service) to help you outline some of the unique requirements or expenses associated with that particular business. It also formats your business plan for you.

A drawback to using business planning software is that it might not provide you the flexibility to convey some of the uniqueness and creativity of your new business, since it's written through the software system.