Most business plan templates are written for an investor
Total addressable market, growth curve, exit. That is the shape of nearly every template, and it is the right shape for one reader in four.
Most plans written in this country go to a lender, a grant panel, or nobody but the person who wrote it. A lender does not care what the business might be worth in five years. A lender cares whether the money comes back, and reads the sections in a different order.
So the sections here are the same for everybody, what is required is not, and the note under each heading changes with who is going to read it.
The section everybody skips gets read first
What could go wrong. It feels like admitting weakness, so it gets left out, or it becomes a paragraph about market conditions that says nothing.
A lender turns to it early, because it is the only section that tells them whether you have thought about the thing they are worried about. Leaving it blank does not make the question go away. It hands the answer to somebody with less information and no reason to be generous.
Name three specific things. Not "an economic downturn": the biggest customer leaving, the one piece of equipment everything depends on, you being ill for a month. Then say what happens to the repayment and what you would do that month.
The numbers have to match, so they are entered once
The commonest reason a plan comes back is that it disagrees with itself. Thirty thousand in the summary, twenty-eight in the money section, a different figure again in the forecast.
Nobody does this deliberately. It happens because a plan gets edited over three weeks and the figure appears in five places.
Here they are entered once and printed once, in a table near the front, and everything else refers to it. The plan still has to agree with your cash flow forecast, which is a separate document, and a lender will want that too.
It checks the arithmetic you would rather it did not
If the repayments on the amount and term you have entered come to more than your year one profit, it says so.
That is not automatically a refusal. Plenty of businesses fund the first year from savings, from another income, or from a longer term. What is fatal is the reader spotting it before you mention it, because from that point they are checking your numbers rather than reading your plan.
Write the summary last
It is the only part certain to be read, which is why everybody starts with it, gets stuck, and stops.
You cannot summarise something that does not exist yet. Write the money section, the customers section and the risks, and the summary takes twenty minutes because you already know what it says.
Length is a signal in both directions
Every section shows a target and your live count. Two hundred to three hundred words is a real answer.
A section of thirty words is a note to yourself. A section of nine hundred is usually padding, and often the padding is there because a different section has no answer and this one is compensating.
A draft you can see the holes in beats a plan you never finish
It will export at any stage. Empty sections come out of the document rather than being printed as a heading over white space, and this page lists what is still missing.
The plan that never gets written is the common outcome, not the plan that gets written badly.
Common questions
Why does it ask who is going to read it?
Because the same eleven sections carry completely different weight depending on the reader, and most templates pretend otherwise. A lender is deciding whether the money comes back, so repayment and what could go wrong matter most. An investor is buying a share of what it becomes, so the market and the team matter most. Changing the reader here changes which sections are marked as needed and changes the note under each heading.
What is the section people most often leave out?
What could go wrong, and it is the one a careful reader turns to early. Leaving it out does not remove the question. It means they answer it themselves, with less information than you have and less generosity. Name the three things most likely to break this and what you would actually do about each.
Why does it take the figures separately from the writing?
Because the commonest reason a plan comes back is that the words say one thing and the numbers say another. Entered once, they appear in the document once, from one source, so the plan cannot contradict itself. It still has to agree with your cash flow forecast, which is a separate document and which a lender will ask for.
Does this do the cash flow forecast too?
No, on purpose. A forecast is a month-by-month model rather than a section of prose, and it belongs in its own tool where it can be exported as a spreadsheet. This plan takes the headline figures so the document is consistent, and the cash flow tool on this site does the twelve months properly.
How long should each section be?
Each one shows a target and your live word count. They range from about 200 to 300 words. Well under is a note to yourself rather than an answer, and this page flags it. Well over is usually padding, and the section that runs to four pages is often the one hiding that a different section has no answer.
Can I export it before it is finished?
Yes. It tells you what is still empty and exports anyway, because a draft with gaps you can see is worth more than a perfect plan you never finish. Empty sections are dropped from the document rather than printed as headings over white space.
It says my business cannot service the loan. What does that mean?
That the repayments on the amount and term you entered come to more than your year one profit, on your own figures and before any interest. It is not necessarily fatal, plenty of businesses fund year one from somewhere else, but the plan has to say where from. A lender works this out in about ten seconds, so it is better to have the answer in the document than to be asked for it.
Is there a limit or a watermark?
No. Full PDF, no page cap, no account, no email, and the plan never leaves your browser. There is also a copy-as-text button if you would rather paste it into a document of your own.