It has been a great experience to create business plans on the fly and also to track the actual results against your plan

- Very easy and flexible software - Its an excellent software for making business plan without the hassles of learning excel formula - Very easy depiction of balance sheet and P&L statement and auto generation

- There is absolutely nothing I don't like about this software

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.

I've checked out no fewer than 10 other options. This is by far the most simple, the most user friendly, and the most feature-rich option out there. It's not only the cleanest and best-working (no bugs!), but it actually gives you the tools you need to cover a wide variety of business planning needs. Given the range of functionality (for example, you can do month-by-month sales forecasting for 36 months at the basic price level - something that most other services charge you an arm and a leg to upgrade tiers to gain access to), no other software comes close to this. And the final output of the business plan is SO CLEAN. A nice variety of example plans are available, and the "guided" element of going step-by-step is really actually helpful (instead of prohibitive, as I've found some guided software just takes you too far away from what you should really be focusing your time on).

Price is very affordable Extremely rich feature set Very flexible Easiest and cleanest user interface Fantastic examples Rich and clean output

This software really only seems to lack a timeline option - you can't custom map a gantt chart for your project timeline. I had to go to another piece of software to get this element in place. But I used LivePlan for the rest of the business plan.

The ability to provide a workable and successful business plan.

I can produce a business plan for my clients extremely quick using LivePlan. I have used it on startups and other business types, in different industries.

The template choices and overall look and feel of the templates I would like to see improved much more.

Very easy to put together a professional business plan and slide deck for investor presentations.

Monthly fee. Expensive during times we weren't actually using it

Farm setup business plan

I like the reviews form the pitch and the task reminders some days before it is to happen. It is simple t use if one just follows every direction and guide provided.

You can only work online. If it can be designed in such a way that you work offline and then upload online, that would be nice. Anyway that's my thought.

It's been a great run with Liveplan for over 5years now

Product way of use and how it makes my financial planning easy

The new price upgrade does not make subscribing easy anymore

I can change the structure and model of our business much easier and accurate

The price set to pay for in order to use the software is friendly There is training on site afforded by the developer There is online support available to help new users

It is not easy to integrate this software with other business plan software that were available for use by the company before moving into this one

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.

Service seemed generic and automated. No personalization or attention to care.

I did the 35 day trial...thinking it was just a trial. The catch is that they will charge you $180.00 and if you contest it, they will not refund you. This product was not easy to use and it's interface wasn't clear so I didn't use it at all. I'm out $180.00 because they care more about money than the quality of services or customer care.

I dislike that they seem more concerned about money than service.

Overall the software excellent. I wish I could get my customers to utilize it more on a consistent basis.

LivePlan takes you through the process of writing a business plan and putting together financial forecasts in an easy, step-by-step manner. Built in benchmarks are great for planning and analysis. The Pitch is excellent for summarizing the focus of any business. QuickBooks integration and Financial Dashboards are outstanding tools for tracking actual vs. budgeted income and expenses. The milestones are perfect for keeping everyone on task.

Could have better interface and step-by-step instructions for the assets and liabilities - how the items in QBO relate to LivePlan. The financial portion of the plan could be better formatted when printing.

The cash flow report showed me how much funding we would need, and when, in order to keep the doors open.

LivePlan gave me the answer I needed to make that go, no go decision to even start a new business by showing me the cash flow I needed, not only to start up but also to operate the business month after month.

LivePlan totally met all our needs. The bank loan officer said it was one of the best business plans they have seen, and wished every applicant could submit such a professional document.

Error free budgetting

User friendly, structured, easy to deploy

Inflexibel, not exportable to Excel, output too rigid structured

LivePlan was excellent for writing a business plan, it helped to guide the actual planning for the business by allowing us to change variables and see the results. The end product is very detailed and professional looking. The best part of the software was the easy walk-through process, it made it very easy to enter data and return to revise it later. Being able to collaborate with peers on the process and have a partner enter data at the same time was also very useful.

I can't think of any significant issues with the software, it worked very well.

Even I couldn't continue using the platform because I decided not to cotinue preparing the business plan, I am 100% I will use again LivePlan software to prepare my business plan for another business idea.

It is really professional, it guide you step by step as you are preparing the business plan in the process. Easy to use online and has a very good technical support. It is great that they keep your files or give files to you if you decided to cancel the account, that made me trust LivePlan more.

I didn't see dificulties using this software.

Brilliant! I just keep renewing, checking and playing with my business financials and have used it to collaborate too!

I love the intuitive nature of this product, it literally takes you through the steps of a business plan, and to really think about all the little elements within your business. It also Synchronises with XERO with is a bonus, so you can see forecast vs actual etc..

Some of the settings for tax and other, for a layperson, are hard to get your head around, I think some videos or other resources would help here?

Cheap, easy to use and provided us with a plan that made sense. I don't know how else our business would survive without it.

Perfect for budgeting and our financials.

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

I purchased this to help create a business plan and it may work for other businesses but the help given was mostly for retail companies. Not much help for an insurance agency.

Customer service is excellent, I was able to reach someone immediately when calling.

It is a little difficult to try and figure out even after watching the tutorials.

When we found LivePlan we were looking for an easy way to record our business structure so that we could show it to stakeholders. This application turned out to be a great tool for that task. We enjoyed it enough to where we keep our account going and now we regularly update our structure to make it easier to have conversations with potential investors, our banker, and other stakeholders.

The ability to collaborate sounds nice but the price associated with doing this makes it slightly prohibitive to us at this point. Perhaps in the future when we expand our business and the potential for a spin off becomes viable we might use this feature.

Positive. Once we wrote out a business plan for a project that never got off the ground. I was grateful. Had we not developed the business plan - we would have gone into a very unprofitable venture.

I think this is a great guide to get you in the planning aspect of any business. It forces you to go through the process and make sure you have clarity in your ideas, so that it all fits together nicely and aligns well.

I had a hard time going back to the plan - and comparing how i was doing in the forecast. I think that in any project one is extremely positive at getting the right results easily, but that is not the case in reality. That is not the plans fault though.

Helped to establish the base ability to understand running costs in good detail.

Found it to be simple easy and suitable yet very profound covering all aspects

I suppose the only negative i think of is the price and even that is not bad for what you get.