3 5 year business plan template

Need Financial Projections for Your Plan? Ideal for a business plan, strategic planning, cash flow forecasting, raising finance, budgeting and financial appraisals. The preparation of a written business plan is not the end-result of the planning process. The realization of that plan is the ultimate goal.

Business Plan Template for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs: Free Download

Having a road map helps you reach your journey's end successfully. Business plans do the same for small businesses. They lay out the milestones you need to reach on your way to building a profitable small business. From finance to marketing, operations to sales, each part of a business plan helps you reach your goals.

What deters most entrepreneurs from creating a business plan, however, is taking the time to write it all out. Many are afraid to do so; they'll find their idea isn't so brilliant after all. For those who take the time to research and write a plan, though, they often find that it helps them identify risks and possible roadblocks.

Business plans are essential to identifying and overcoming obstacles on your path so you can build a successful company. While writing a business plan can be frustrating especially when you're writing one from scratch, there are plenty of online templates available to take some of the pain out of the process.

Small business owners can benefit from simple, easy-to-follow business plan tools so they spend less time writing and more time launching. Here is our simple business plan template, plus eight resources to help you craft a professional business plan quickly and easily. The executive summary is arguably the most important section of a business plan, because it needs to draw your readers into your plan and entice them to continue reading.

If your executive summary doesn't capture the reader's attention, they won't read further. Even though it is the first section, you should write it last. This section is an overview of your entire business.

Make sure you include basic information, such as when your company was founded, what kind of business entity it is, what state it is registered in, etc. Provide a summary of your company's history to give the readers a solid understanding of who you are and what your business is. Focus on your customers' perspective and needs by demonstrating the problem you are trying to solve. The goal with this section is to prove your business fills a market need and will remain viable for the foreseeable future.

In this section, clearly define who your target audience is, where you will find them, how you will reach them and, most importantly, how you will deliver your product or service to them. Provide a deep analysis of your ideal customer and how your business provides a solution for them.

You'll also want to include your competitors in this section and illustrate how your business is different. What are their strengths and weaknesses, and how will you differentiate yourself from the pack?

Before anyone will invest in your business, they want a complete understanding of whom they are investing in. This section should illustrate how your business is organized. As you list each individual, provide a summary of their experience and their role within your company. Treat this section as a series of mini resumes and consider appending full-length resumes to your business plan.

Last, the financial plan should include a detailed overview of your finances. At the very least, you should include cash flow statements as well as your profit and loss projections over the next three to five years.

You can also include historical financial data from the past few years, your sales forecast, balance sheet, etc. Make sure this section is precise and accurate. It's often best practice to create this section with a professional accountant. Finally, if you're seeking outside funding for your business, highlight why you're seeking financing options, where that money will go and when investors can expect a return on their investment.

LivePlan has become a recognized online business tools resource to help budding entrepreneurs every step of the way, from the planning stages to launch.

Like other services, LivePlan allows business owners to craft perfectly formatted plans. They have more than plans encompassing nearly every industry you can think of. After selecting the template you like, you can tweak, customize and create the presentation to pitch your idea to would-be investors. Post-launch, businesses can track revenue and expenses against forecasts. Perhaps you've heard about entrepreneurs who jotted down their business idea on a napkin at a bar.

Designed for entrepreneurs who are itching to get started, this simple business plan template asks a handful of questions that you can answer in one or two sentences. The plan covers everything from what you plan to sell and who will buy it to how you will get paid, "hustle" to find customers, foresee challenges, and overcome obstacles in a single page.

Bizplan lets you create a business plan for free using your smartphone or tablet, and it offers more than just business plans. You also have access to free pitch script templates, marketing tools, coaching and collaboration features. You can upgrade to paid plans that give you access to more tools, tutorials and other features. Not all small businesses are concerned with credit lines, partnerships and office space — at least not in the beginning.

So why should their initial business plans include these things? Copyblogger's Remarkably Simple Business Plan doesn't. Instead, it offers a business plan template fit for the real would-be entrepreneur. Where most templates assume all businesses are uniform, Copyblogger's model is designed to get to the heart of what entrepreneurs need to know to start a business: the ins and outs of the product or service, how customers will find the business and how the business will make money.

Simply copy and paste the template, created by Sonia Simone, co-founder and chief content officer of Copyblogger Media, and you're good to go. Financials are often the most confusing and difficult aspect of a business plan for new business owners.

Founded in , Enloop is regarded as an innovative player in the business-plan-creation industry. Like other services, Enloop uses an online interface to automate the creation of your business plan. To get started, users enter basic information about their businesses, including product details. From there, Enloop's software uses metrics to predict the financial performance of the company compared with similar companies in the same sector.

Enloop's goal is to help entrepreneurs make better-informed decisions. Here's how! Created by The One Page Business Plan Company , this simple template covers only the key areas entrepreneurs need to address to start a business: their vision for the company, why the business exists, objectives for setting goals, strategies to make the business successful and action plans indicating what work needs to be done.

Unlike complicated business plans, boring blocks of text are not required — bullet points will do. Greg Go, co-founder of online finance community Wise Bread , is a big believer that entrepreneurs who are just starting out don't need lengthy business plans.

What they need, says Go, is an "internal working plan" to get started. The U. Small Business Administration SBA has a wealth of free planning, financing, and consulting tools and resources, both online and through available consultants. The SBA offers some great recommendations on creating a business plan, including what type of plan you should choose depending on your business and your needs. Additional reporting by Katherine Arline and Marci Martin. Some source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

Sean Peek is a writer, small business owner and SEO specialist. He began his career in digital marketing as a freelance writer in and has over five years of experience in the B2B space. You can learn more at lightningmediapartners. Product and service reviews are conducted independently by our editorial team, but we sometimes make money when you click on links.

Learn more. Start Your Business Business Plans. Free Business Plan Templates for Startups. What Is a Vision Statement?

3 YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN EXAMPLES. Develop a 3 to 5 Year Strategic Business Plan to Scale Up Your Business. The Five-Step Process to Create Your 3. Get a professional business-plan template at no cost. 3. The $ Startup's One-Page Business Plan. Who said a business plan has to be a 5. SME Toolkit Business Plan Samples. The SME Toolkit, jointly offered by IFC.

Are you an entrepreneur looking to download a free business plan? If so, you have come to the right place. Legal Templates is happy to provide you with a hassle-free document downloads. Click the links below to download 1 a blank document, and 2 a document that is filled in for you to reference.

A business plan is a written description of your business's future, a document that tells what you plan to do and how you plan to do it. If you jot down a paragraph on the back of an envelope describing your business strategy, you've written a plan, or at least the germ of one.

Think you have a great idea for a business? The simple business plan template presented here will get you started.

Business Plans: A Step-by-Step Guide

There are many reasons why every company should have a business plan , but not every business needs a formal plan to show to outsiders. If your plan is just for yourself and your team, then you may be fine with just the lean business plan. However, if you do need to develop a plan to show to investors, banks, lawyers, and so forth, you can follow this simple business plan outline and decide on how in-depth or concise your business plan needs to be. No matter the type of business plan you create, these are the six basic sections you should include. These sections are necessary when working with an outside party or potential investor, to give them a quick look into each aspect of your business. For those looking for a deeper definition of how to fill out each section, skip to the detailed outline below.

Free Business Plan Template

The success of your organization — no matter what size or industry — depends on the thoroughness of your planning and vision. A strategic plan can provide a roadmap for accomplishing specific goals, and will increase your chances of reaching objectives on time and budget. Additionally, we've provided customizable strategic planning templates in Smartsheet, a collaborative, real-time work execution platform that empowers you to better plan, manage, and report on strategic initiatives. Strategic planning may be utilized on a large scale, such as planning for business growth over several years or to help a nonprofit or governmental organization reach its stated mission. A strategic plan can also be used on a smaller scale, such as crafting a marketing plan or developing strategy for the goals of one department within a business or organization. It is important to note that strategy is distinct from planning: While strategy looks at why certain steps should be taken, a plan outlines how to enact those steps. The purpose of strategic planning is to provide a thoughtful, deliberate approach to reaching objectives based on an in-depth analysis of both internal and external factors affecting an organization. A strategic plan often covers multiple years, addressing both short- and long-term goals. It also provides a way of tracking progress and measuring success.

Having a road map helps you reach your journey's end successfully. Business plans do the same for small businesses.

A 5-year business plan will help you manage your company and seek loans or investment money. This term is familiar to most commercial loan officers and small business investors. Learning how to write an effective five year business plan helps you manage better and improves your chances of receiving the loans or investment dollars you need to succeed.

Free Strategic Planning Templates

Your Year Strategic Plan can be viewed as a base camp on the way to the summit of your long term goal. This can be used as a tool to align your company around a common purpose and closes the strategy execution gap. Typically, you will determine your year strategic business plan as part of your Annual Planning session , which will include your goals and objective for the year as well as outlining opportunities and threats facing your company. We also have a great blog post on how to facilitate a strategic planning session to get the return on investment from your planning session. We also have a great virtual strategic planning post that provides great tips on running a virtual planning session. Examples of the types of Targets and KPI dashboards you will want to consider include the following:. You can add or subtract from this list to include the Targets that are most meaningful to your business. The one Target that should apply for all businesses is Revenue. We challenge you to set a Revenue Target that will allow you to 2X your business over the next years. Be sure to include the year you that believe you will hit those Revenue Targets so that you can hold each other accountable. Strong 3 year strategic plans help you grow revenue and stay competitive and not caught up in the short term day to day management of your company. Download our 3 year strategic growth initiatives template. Winning Moves are strategic growth initiatives and actions that enable you to double your revenue 2x within years. It is this business strategy that sets you apart from the competition. These are usually operational in nature or related to your infrastructure and help you while scaling up.

Even if you do have some experience, getting a refresher on what a modern business plan looks like is always a good idea. After all, business plans have changed over the years, and what lenders and investors expect now is different than it was even just 10 years ago. This template has been used by universities such as Princeton and Babson to teach entrepreneurs how to start businesses. You can see the template below or you can download it as a Word document using the form on the right side of this page. A good business plan template can help you get your thoughts organized. Plus, it can show you the general layout of a standard business plan.