Basic requirements for a business plan

Business planning can be confidently called the basis of the entire organizational process, as well as a tool that allows you to attract third-party financial resources for the development of an enterprise. At the same time, the requirements for the business plan are quite strict and unambiguous, and their observance allows one to give a real assessment of the expected efficiency of the company's economic growth.

General Criteria

To begin with, it will be important to highlight the general requirements for the business plan, which must be adhered to when forming your document:

• design should be attractive, but not overly conspicuous. After all, the project of your business is the first thing that a potential lender learns about you, and therefore it is necessary to maintain a commitment to the image;
• the degree of detail depends entirely on your goals. At the same time, we must not forget that the project should not have unnecessary details, but structure, brevity and clarity of thought should be present. The optimal length is 40 pages. If necessary, the document can be increased to 80 pages or reduced to 30;
• it is better not to include any background information and secondary information in the plan. If its presence is nevertheless necessary, it is better to put it in applications, the volume of which is not limited. Moreover, be prepared for the investor to ask for additional information anyway, and therefore it is better to be ready for this;
• do not forget about the language and style of presentation - it must be clear and accessible to the reader. Your text should not be replete with unknown terms. The meaning of the above should be clear to any reader, and not only to specialists in this field. Stick to a laconic, convincing style;
• The requirements for a business plan include the use of tables, graphs, diagrams. Do not forget that the information presented in numbers is much better remembered;
• the analysis itself should be based on reliable data. All forecasts and your assumptions must be confirmed by links to sources of information;
• do not neglect the discussion of risks. It is better if you initiate this yourself, rather than independent experts attracted from outside;
• the plan should be as comprehensive as possible, give the lender a complete picture of how much you are asking for, what you will spend it on, and what of all of this he will receive personally.

Another important point: investors prefer to get started with a summary of the project, which should fit on two or three pages and contain the main theses.

Do not forget to take into account the individual requirements for the business plan put forward by a particular investor in the process of drawing up the document. And the last - the number of reproduced copies should be sufficient. Therefore, do not forget to ask how many people will consider your project.

Timeline

At the initial stage, it is necessary to set a deadline by which your document will be ready. This procedure is especially important if we take into account the rate of change in economic conditions, and, accordingly, the indicators that you will cite in the calculation part. Too lengthy procedure will lead to the fact that your information will simply become irrelevant.

It will be better if you leave a spare time corridor for writing a project, since, as practice shows, the preparation of this document is always delayed.

Document structure

The next thing to consider is the business plan requirements. It begins with a title page, on which you must indicate information in the following order:

• Title.
• The author, his contacts.
• Form of ownership.
• The cost of the project, including the amount of investments in it.
• Number of scheduled jobs.
• Number of jobs to be filled through the employment center.
• Year, city and region of compilation.

This is followed by a table of contents as required by the business plan requirements. It is necessary to indicate all sections and pages on which they are located.

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Chapter 1. Methodological foundations for developing a business plan

1. Business plan and the main questions it answers

1. Enterprise planning functions

Chapter 2. Business Plan Development Process

2. Stages of developing a business plan

Chapter 3. Business plan structure

3. The main sections of the business plan

3. Factors affecting the structure, composition and scope of a business plan

The main requirements for a business plan relate to the following important points:

Calculations can be carried out both in constant prices and current ones. In this case, VAT may not be taken into account. The calculation is carried out in constant prices in the event that we are talking about a business plan for an investment project. This does not take into account inflation either. There are situations when you have to make calculations at current prices. In this case, it is imperative to take into account inflation. Moreover, it is calculated separately for each region in which the products are sold. All basic prices are recorded in the currency that is the main one on the territory of the state where the products are sold.

Tax

This is a very important part of all business planning. The requirements for drawing up a business plan oblige you to calculate the amount of taxes that the business owner will have to pay. It all depends on what organizational and legal form of activity the entrepreneur chooses. Regardless of this, taxes will have to be calculated taking into account various benefits and interest rates adopted for a particular form of activity. In addition to the types and amounts of taxes in the business plan, you can also specify the due date. This will save the business owner from various fines and penalties associated with late payment.

Project implementation period

All calculations are carried out for such a period that it exceeds by a year the onset of the payback point of the project. This is a very important aspect. It helps determine the payback period of the product. Most often it is equal to about two to three years, but it can be delayed. This is a reason to think about whether it is worthwhile to engage in the production or sale of these products at all. If we are talking about a large financial project, then the payback period can be much longer. It can be five years or more.

Frequency of calculations

Requirements for the development of a business plan are such that you have to make monthly calculations for the first year of the existence of an investment project. If in the first year the production is not fully debugged and launched at full capacity, then the calculations must be done monthly until this happens. Further calculations are made on a quarterly basis, and then at intervals of a year.

Payments in foreign currency

If we are talking about the import or export of products, then all calculations are made in foreign currency for the external market. It could be dollars. Euro and so on. These amounts must be taken into account in the business plan. Foreign currency is converted into rubles at the rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. In this case, the date of calculation and the rate are shown as a mark in the business plan.

Economic efficiency of the project