Best Planning Software for a Small Start-Up

LivePlan helped me create a workable, realistic strategic plan. After one year in business, I revisited the plan and saw that my projections on revenue, margins and start up costs were spot on, thanks in part to this great software tool. I recommended it it to several prospective bakery owners as a well-priced tool to start turning their dream into a viable business reality.

Pros

Live Plan was perfect for my needs - it helped me shape my strategic plan and think through my start-up capital requirements and revenue projections. I loved that it gave me some industry benchmarks and suggested budget items (like employee payroll liabilities) I hadn't thought of. The templates were also very helpful to show me what a plan should look like.

Cons

I didn't like that the software didn't highlight at the beginning how to coordinate between my LivePlan line items and my Quick Bookls like items. It made using the review feature (to compare projections with performance) more difficult to use.

Good for planning and forecasting, rubbish at Actuals to compare performance against plan

Checked my business plan was viable, helped me clarify my thought processes. Gave me something to measure performance against. Unfortunately doesnt integrate to Zoho Books (as of March 2018), nor is there any opton to import from a CSV or other spreadsheet format. If you are a Xero or QB user you can link to get your actuals for comparison against plan, BUT proceed with caution. You cant undo the data import - everything needs deleting manually, and you cant choose which timeframe you import data for. Its last 2 years plus current year and thats that. So if your business has changed significantly and you only want say last six months dat you cant achieve this

Pros

Cloud based, easy step by step process for planning for novices. Once you have put in the basics of revenue streams and costs its very easy to play "what if" type questions and see the impact on your forecast. You can get into enormous detail if you want or build this up over time as you develop your thought process.

Cons

Where the product really falls down is when you want to compare with Actuals. It only connects to Xero and Quick Books and you have no control over the data or time period that it syncs at all - current year plus last two years, which is rubbish if your business has pivoted and you only want the last six months data for example. Whats worse is you cant roll back the sync - you have to manually delete all sync'd data. Further if you dont use Xero or QBooks, there is no option to import from a spreadsheet - so again you need a data entry person to manually enter actual data unless you want to spend ages doing it yourself... Very disappointed as up to this point had liked the platform.

Decent enough for SMEs

Overall a good starting point to assist a small business entrepreneur with little or no business planning experience,should consider more options to integrate with accounting apps and visually biased analytical tools to enable better tracking of post planning perfomance on more devices as well.

Pros

I like the ease and simplicity of building the projections and adjusting them with different scenarios.

Cons

The write up section is a bit limiting in certain aspects for example there are no font selection options if one wants to change to their company document preferred font style ( Century Gothic) as well as set my paragraphs as justified as opposed to left indented.I cannot import tables and adjust them within the plan document, The graphical representations of the projections are a bit visually limited in color and info graphic presentation options .particularly if one wants a more visual document.It would also be nice to have a quick preview option for the document as u build it without necessarily having to export or down load a pdf to get and idea of how it look in print.

Just what I needed!

I cannot imagine wring my plan with without Liveplan! LOVE THIS PRODUCT!

Pros

This program walked me through my process and made it as easy as possible to navigate and formulate my strategies. I found other models very difficult, this made business plan wring easy!

Cons

None! I am happy with all features and will recommend the program to any entrepreneur!

Too expensive

Ok to use but when done with the plan, there is not really a reason to keep paying.

Pros

Easy to use and good help for creating a Business plan

Cons

When you have done the plan it is just there and I have been paying a lot of money for just storing my Business plan for 2 years. Now I have to prioritize what I spend my money on and this is one thing I dont need at the moment.