Here are some of the top leading tools and resources to create affordable business plans.
1. Score
This is a non-profit business resource platform with dozens of free templates including business plan documents in PDF and Word format. The business plan templates available at Score are suitable for startups as well as established companies looking to raise capital from venture capital firms and focusing in the business growth phase. The kind of templates available at Score includes financial projection templates in Excel, sales templates as well as other kind of business and strategy templates. There are also SWOT analysis templates available which will enable you to enter your strengths and weaknesses to help you plan better and prepare your business analysis documents.
2. vFinance
vFinance is a company that uses their own resources and knowledge to provide an affordable business plan template with the key sections to help entrepreneurs and business people to make winning business plan documents.
In this site, you can download a free business plan template targeted to your own industry and it gives the opportunity to post your business plan to professional investors, as the company specialises in linking entrepreneurs with professional investors. The business plan template is available to download in Word or Zip format.
3. US Small Business Administration (SBA.gov)
The SBA too offers free resources to visitors including the opportunity to download compelling business plan templates to be used as an outline to prepare the business plan after having entered a few details about your business. The generated business plan includes some of the key sections present in any business plan document, like the Executive Summary, a description of the company, Market Research, Product & Service Line, Marketing Plan, Sales Plan and Financials. The output can be saved as a Microsoft Word document on your own computer and edited in Microsoft Office or online using Word Online or Office 365.
4. Business-In-A-Box
Business-In-A-Box is an online service provided by Biztree. In this resource you can find over 1800+ business documents and templates including compelling business plans to start your business. Aside of the business strategic plans, there are other business templates available for a wide range of business segments, including planning & management, sales & marketing, human resources as well as finance & accounting. See more here.
5. Rocket Lawyer Business Plan
Rocket Lawyer is one of the top providers for legal documents. Using the business plan generation tool, the users will be asked to answer a few questions about the business to help narrow the search to locate the most affordable business plan document.
6. Bplans
BPlans is one of the top leading providers for business plan solutions, offering comprehensive business plan services. The site also offers business plan templates for free which should fit well for almost any incipient startup. Among these services, the site also offers access to LivePlan, which is an online solution to help planners in creating efficient business plans online. In their Samples & Examples section, the resource offers more than 500 free samples of business plans covering a wide range of business situations and types.
7. Microsoft Office
Microsoft offers a wide range of business plan templates and documents available.
Finally, one time-saving tip to prepare your business plan is to focus in the Executive Summary after you have completed all the other sections. You can write your executive summary last as this will help to link all your other sections in your document that are already completed.