Top 7 Free Downloadable Business Plan Templates for Your Business
Creating a business plan is more than just putting your ideas on paper for the benefit of a potential investor. It allows you to evaluate your opinions, test your ideas and discover new opportunities. It also allows you to identify and avoid potential mistakes. However, creating a business plan does not mean starting from scratch. Templates are useful because they provide a foundation that you can build upon in creating a plan for your business. Here are some detailed business plan templates you can download for free to get you started:
1. Business Plan Template from Score.org
This customizable Word template, from Score.org, is comprehensive and generic enough to customize for most types of businesses. It also includes a “Refining the Plan” resource that will be helpful in modifying the plan to suit your specific business needs, especially if this is your first attempt to write a business plan.
2. Business plan templates from Invoiceberry
Invoiceberry is another brand that offers free business plan templates for small businesses. Its templates come in .docx, .odt, .xlsx, and .pptx formats. Each one also contains a marketing plan and executive summary template. All you need to do to gain access to these templates is provide your email address. Click here to access the business plans.
3. Business Plans from SCU’s My Own Business Institute
Santa Clara University provides a guide to creating business plans here, as well as a fillable business plan template here. This template is a word document, containing all the 15 sections outlined by SCU in its business plan guide. The site also contains other helpful resources such as sample financial sheets for your business.
4. The 100$ Startup’s Simple Business Plan Template
The $100 Startup, a website for the best-selling book of the same name has this one page business plan for small businesses. This business plan is super simple and can be easily completed in less than an hour. If you want to provide further detail, you can put that in an appendix to the document. The website also has many other simplified resources for business owners, available here.
5. Business Plan Template from the British Business Bank
The British Business Bank has a mid-sized business plan template, available here, in Word format. The template is also accompanied by a Guide which you can also download to assist you in filling the required information to create your business plan. Other templates available on the site include the cash flow forecast template and the personal survival budget template, all accessible here .
6. FormSwift’s Editable Business Plan Tool
Formswift has a business plan tool on its website that prompts business owners with questions and guides them to create a comprehensive business plan. The business plan tool which is available here, allows you to select between 14 different types of industries, from restaurant to small business and even to retail store. Each of these industries comes with its own customized prompts to enable the generation of a business plan that will be downloaded at the end of the process. Other templates available on the site are a SWOT Analysis guide and a startup costs calculator, all available on the site.
7. US Small Business Administration’s sample business plans
The SBA provides two types of business plans for new businesses. The first is the traditional business plan format which is somewhat lengthy but very comprehensive. The second is the lean startup format. This business plan format would be preferable if you want to explain or start your business quickly, your business is relatively simple, or you plan to regularly change and refine your business plan. Samples of the traditional business plan and lean start up business plan formats are available here.
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