How to write a business plan yourself

The concept of a business plan and its need

The main core of any business is planning. Planning is the only way to move forward, it's a survival strategy. Currently, not all commercial firms have formalized plans. In their place, there are various decisions of owners and managers on current activities, calculated for the nearest period of time, and not for the future. It becomes known about the mistakes, miscalculations, losses only when receiving the balance, reports on financial results, which will not be able to return the lost money and time. For this reason, many firms find themselves in a difficult financial position or even on the verge of bankruptcy. In the business world, only one thing remains unchanged - change. Everything around, from technology to competition in the market - just tomorrow, even by a millimeter, even by a gram, will not be the same as today. To stay afloat, you must constantly calculate events two or three steps ahead. Making all sorts of current decisions will never replace planning - developing a promising business plan. With its help, you can attract the necessary financial resources. It will help you navigate and move forward in the complex world of business.

Who is this article for?

For managers employed in small business, for individual entrepreneurs who often work without accounting and a bank account, for all those who are interested in developing a business plan themselves, with the ability and dignity to defend their project and not “Get lost in the face” in conversation with bankers and investors. The main purpose of this article is to help entrepreneurs, both beginners and experienced ones, independently draw up a business plan, effectively plan their activities for a short and long term. The issues of practical drawing up of business plans for different areas of business will be disclosed, a typical model of a business plan will be presented. Ultimately, we hope that this guide will help entrepreneurs choose the only correct and correct path in the development of their business.

So what is a business plan, how to use it, and why is having a business plan so important?

Since the business plan is a ready-made description of the company, we will talk about who might be interested in it. A business plan is a special look at the future of your business, containing answers to the following questions:

can you offer your customers?
which competitors will you face?
will you have an advantage?
can your business become big and profitable?

A business plan is a document that describes the future of an enterprise, analyzes all the problems that it may face and identifies ways to solve these problems. A business plan is a tool for attracting investments, since it is one of the main documents on the basis of which banks and investors give money. A properly drawn up business plan ultimately provides an answer to the question: is it worth investing in this or that business at all and will it bring income?

A well-written business plan allows:

look into the future, which is very important for small start-up companies when they need confidence that they will survive the most dangerous first two years of existence;
look back in order to assess whether you are moving towards your goals correctly;
look around in order to announce your company to suppliers, customers, bankers, investors.

It is not uncommon for aspiring entrepreneurs to face a rather difficult problem - how to draw up a business plan. This task is not easy, because in order to work through each element, you need to have certain knowledge and understanding of the activity in which you are going to start a business. If they are not there, then you will first have to get acquainted with the information, various methods, and only then proceed to practice. So all the same, you need to start a business wisely and calculate everything.

By the way, we will make a series of articles with examples and sample business plans.

Setting the ultimate goal for ourselves

Before writing a business plan, it is very important at the beginning of project development to understand for yourself what specific goal the organization will pursue. For a successful implementation, it is necessary to take into account the importance of three significant factors:

Awareness of the initial location (what we will start from, the so-called "A" point).
Determination of the final goal, the achievement of which will be the most important result (let it be point "B").
Drawing up a clear sequence of how to come from point "A" to point "B", as well as understanding the mechanism, working it out.

Determine for whom we draw up a business plan

Next, you need to understand for whom this plan is being drawn up. The detail of the presentation and the evidence base will depend on your final choice. Any project is prepared for one of the following "consumers":

For potential investors. These can be lenders, state support bodies that provide subsidies and other incentives to developing businesses, various donors.

When writing in this case, special attention should be paid to the evidence base of the consistency of the project being developed, as well as to the conviction of the effectiveness of the use of the funds provided. This information will be relevant both for those who lend money and for those who give them free of charge (subsidies, grants).

It is very important to make all your actions logical and consistent. Some information may be presented slightly embellished to obtain financial support. However, you do not need to be zealous with this.

Hello, dear readers of the online magazine about money “RichPro. u "! This article will discuss how to write a business plan. This publication is a straightforward step-by-step guide to turn a raw business idea into a confident step-by-step plan for a clear task.

We will review:

At the end of the topic, we will show the main mistakes of beginner entrepreneurs. There will be a lot of arguments in favor of creating a high-quality and well-thought-out business plan that will bring the realization of your idea and the success of the business in the future.

Also, this article will provide examples of finished works, which you can simply use, or you can take as a basis for developing your project. Ready-made examples of the presented business plans can be downloaded free of charge.

In addition, we will answer the most frequently asked questions and clarify why not everyone writes a business plan, if it is so necessary.

The structure of a business plan and the content of its main sections - a step-by-step guide to drawing it up

How to write a business plan: detailed instructions on how to write yourself ????

In a desire to open their own business as soon as possible, many aspiring entrepreneurs start immediately, not realizing what their actions will bring in the future.

There is another situation when a person spends most of his time dreaming about wonderful dreams, without doing anything, because he does not know from which side to approach at all the desired.

In both cases, it turns out the following: without a clear plan of how to act, a novice businessman gets lost in a rather confused world of economics and, as a result, loses striving for a goal.

Competent distribution of finances is one of the main conditions for high-quality management of any business. And here financial planning plays an important role. What are financial plans and how they are developed, you will learn from the article.

What is a financial plan and what is it for

The Financial Plan (FP) is the forecasting of the work and development of the enterprise in terms of the cost of all processes. It reflects the monetary aspects of any relationship arising from the enterprise:

with the outside world;
between owners and / or investors and the management of the organization;
between divisions within the company;
between staff and management.

FP allows you to optimally distribute cash flows among all processes in the enterprise and predict financial results. This ultimately determines the viability of any business.

A financial plan is an important part of a business plan. The first FP is created at the stage of formalizing a business idea into a real enterprise. It is FP that can make the future project attractive for investment. Even if you do not plan to look for investors, at this stage the financial plan will help determine how profitable your project can be.

Main tasks of financial planning:

determine the size of the required financial resources and the ratio of own and borrowed funds;
justify the need and calculate the amount and possible structure of the capital raised;
to form directions of investment activity;
to study the possibilities of increasing the profitability and profitability of the business;
to streamline relations with the budget, banks, etc.

Types of financial plans

Financial plans differ in the length of the planning period and composition - planning articles that differ in:

assignment ;
granularity.

The main criterion for the classification of financial plans is the planning period:

Plan is nothing, planning is everything

Every week our investment company receives applications from investment seekers. Quite often, entrepreneurs attach a business plan for the project along with the letter. Over 10 years of work, more than 800 different business plans of different quality have passed through our hands.

For this reason, we decided to summarize our experience and draw up step-by-step instructions for drawing up a business plan with examples and descriptions of common mistakes.

In the current world, where the speed of change is important, 3-5-year plans are most often not executed with 100% accuracy (sometimes even a business plan for a year quickly loses its relevance), but having a business plan is very important, i.e. When planning, you collect the most relevant information about your business and market, form a development plan, and also predict what resources and team you need to achieve your goals or quickly adapt to ongoing changes.

Read to the end and make smart business plans that will be useful to you, investors or investment funds.

What is a business plan and what is it for?

The procedure for drawing up a business plan is to record a clear understanding of the state of the company at the current moment, to outline the prospects for its development, and also to calculate what resources will be required for this.

For a budding entrepreneur, preparing a business plan is not an easy task. To write a business plan correctly, you need to be deeply immersed in the industry, understand key financial indicators, and also be able to assess the market and its prospects.