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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Easy to use and good help for creating a Business plan

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.

It was a great experience with LivePlan. They have a clean and attractive user interface with helpful guidance. The customer service is shockingly amazing. I requested one payment refund after not using it in over a year and it was super quick and easy. Highly recommend this software.

It's clean, attractive, and easy-to-use.

It is subscription based and not cheap, however, I was shocked at how quickly and easily they refunded and cancelled my subscription after my request since I had not used it in over a year (Thanks Chris!)

So far, I really enjoy using it. When I get more in depth, it will used more often. Right now I am just trying to get my business plan wrote.

I really appreciate that it helps me find my wording. It does all the hard work and I appreciate that so much.

Something that I think needs improved is that if you need help there is someone on live chat to help. There might be, but I havent checked yet.

Strategic planning is very good, but the formats could be better.

i like the easy way the tool helps to achieve a plan.

The short term planning is not that easy. I would like a tool for cashflow planning.

Excellent. Very easy to use and details

It provides details in planning with example

Some examples use is very hard to understand in the business that I Have

Easy to use and understand. It’s an opportunity to understand future sales forecasts.

Tax percentage depending upon the city would help.

Great

Ease of use and able to easily change parameters

wOULD LIKE TO SEE BASIC EVALATION FOR BUSINESS

Software is good but for one job only. If the size of plant change I need to start all over. If it goes back to the initial plan I have to redo it all over again unless I have saved and downloaded the original version.

Easy to use and guide you to what it has to be done.

The fact that you can not make several business plans at the same time for example a business plan for a 300 ton per day plant and a business plan for a 1000 ton per day plant if I am building both plants at the same time.

It took a few attempts to put together a business plan, but it worked out.

This is all-in-one software that helps you organize thoughts, data, expectations and organize everything in a meaningful way that helps you plan, budget and forecast.

It’s needed at the beginning, but not later.

I love the output of LivePlan. The business plans and one-pagers look clean, modern, and professional. It's very simple to enter information about our business into LivePlan, and the software asks great questions.

If you already have a separate financial model or set of financial projections for your company, it can be difficult to enter them into LivePlan.

I don't think it could be easier for someone who is unfamiliar with formal business plans to produce an accurate and professional result. I learned more about running my small business from a week of focused work in this software than I have from any other single source. It has fundamentally changed the way I view my business ventures and it will undoubtedly save me from many cash flow frustrations in the future. Highly recommend.

Logical & progressive layout, detailed instructions, examples. I especially appreciate that so far, I have hardly run into any situation that I could not accurately represent in the business plan because there has always been an appropriate option.

I haven't used every feature yet. I will update if I have suggestions, but for now I'm still learning.

Excellent way to stay on top of numbers and / or line up your business for sale.

The dashboard gives you nice graphical view of your monthly, quarterly and annual financials. Highly recommended this software especially to SME's that needs to keep on top of cash flow!

You can't upload financial figures from a file, only from Xero or Quickbooks Online. No international benchmarking data

This depends on if I get my refund or not.

Well, the price seemed too good to be true, but I signed up anyway. Withing five minutes of signing up with my credit card and watching a couple lackluster videos and trying to find what I needed, I decided this wasn't for me. I proceeded to cancel, but it appears I cannot get my money back and I must wait one month for my subscription to cancel. How easy they taketh, but how difficult to returnth.

No robust, colorful, attractive. Videos a bit bland.

Error free budgetting

User friendly, structured, easy to deploy

Inflexibel, not exportable to Excel, output too rigid structured

I would recommend this to anyone with a small business who wants more insight into their financial data. One piece we will not be using is the pitch feature, but I can see value in startups having the ability to put together comprehensive plans.

This software integrates with Quickbooks Online and allows us to get accurate positions of many financial measures on a daily basis. I was never thrilled with Quickbooks dashboard, and LivePlan solved that problem in a very affordable way.

I do not have any complaints. Setup was easy, and the Quickbooks online mapping worked without much effort on our end.