Business technology improves efficiency, streamlines processes, enhances communication, and makes work easier. Business planning and forecasting tools are a good example; they provide a roadmap for you to follow, and accurate financial information to help banks or potential investors make informed decisions on investing in your business.
In this Remitly guide we’ll provide some tips on using business-plan templates and forecasting tools to create a comprehensive business plan and make forecasting easier.
Understanding the importance of templates in business planning
A template is a pattern that guides how to structure documents such as plans, financial reports, invoices, agreements, and customer feedback forms to capture required information.
In business planning, templates:
- Streamline the process.
- Ensure consistency.
- Capture required information, producing complete documents.
- Saves time and effort.
- Ensure accuracy.
- Organize information clearly, communicating it effectively to readers and reviewers.
- Provide a professional outlook to stakeholders and potential investors.
- Support easy collaboration between team members, reducing chances of errors.
- Promote adaptability; you can audit a template’s structure, then edit to introduce missing aspects and still maintain all the benefits of a clear formula or guideline.
Benefits of using financial forecasting tools for startups and small businesses
A good business plan template includes a section on financial projections to help predict revenue, profits, losses, risks, and expenses. This helps to make informed financial decisions and present accurate data to investors and lenders.
It also provides a platform to:
- Manage cash flow better.
- Make good decisions to set realistic goals.
- Budget as accurately as possible.
- Attract investors based on data-backed evidence. This also supports and guides your negotiation process.
- Identify, evaluate, and prioritize business risks.
- Optimize resources, making good decisions on areas to support most, because of their potential return on your investment.
So, what should a business plan look like?
Key elements of a comprehensive business plan
Your business plan should detail your goals, strategies, and financial projections. You could write this out manually from scratch, but this presents a lot more opportunities for errors. This is where technology steps in, with business plan templates.
There are several business plan templates online一free of charge or at a cost. Whichever you choose, consider the key elements you’re going to want from your chosen template. Any good-quality template should include:
- An executive summary, quickly outlining the key details in the plan.
- A company description, including your mission and vision statements, products and services, your target market, and expected reach—are you aiming nationally or internationally?
- Market analysis, including your competitive advantage.
- Your organizational structure, which reveals the business owners, management team, and operations.
- The features and benefits of your products and services, including any improvements or changes you expect in the future.
- Your sales and marketing strategy to advertise the business and the associated budget.
- An operations plan showing how you intend to run the business and keep it sustainable. You’ll include information such as supply chain management, production, logistics, and compliance with existing laws and regulations, e.g., cybersecurity.
- Human resources. You can attach resumes of key personnel in the appendix section.
- Financial projection and forecasting.
- Appendix to attach any supporting documents.
As you can see, it’s a pretty comprehensive document. Templates can make things a lot easier, help you avoid missing something, and ensure you provide what potential investors or banks are looking for.
Critical components of financial projections and forecasting
A business plan template will provide a section for financial projections and forecasting. But how do you prepare and present this information professionally?
Consider using financial projection tools to help generate these critical components—it’ll make things a bit easier:
- Balance sheet
A financial statement showing your business’s ownership percentages, liabilities, and assets at a particular time. Assets are divided into short-term (current) and long-term (fixed). - Cashflow forecast or statement
Predicts incoming and outgoing money over a specific period to manage cash. - Income statement
Details profits and losses over a period to assess the business’s financial health.
These three components are standard. However, you can include extra information—like a position statement to analyze industry trends and assess how the business performs compared to the competition. Adding this sort of information helps banks or potential investors get a fuller picture of your plans.
How to select the best business plan templates
You’ll find loads of business plan templates online. To help you decide, consider which type you’ll need.
Types of business plans
- Traditional business plan: This one’s comprehensive and detailed, making it a good option for early stage startups, or even businesses that are still just ideas, to attract investors or secure loans.
- One-page business plan: Used to make quick presentations, pitch ideas, and communicate internally with management and employees.
- Lean startup business plan: This one’s also used for internal reviews to assess customer feedback and test ideas to drive growth.
- Operational business plan: Takes an in-depth look at day-to-day activities and operations such as logistics and resources. It should include short-term and long-term goals to guide the team.
- Growth business plan: This type details market analysis, growth strategies, financial needs, and projections to prepare the business to expand into new markets.
- A feasibility business plan shows how viable new products, services, or ideas are to guide potential investors.
Other things to consider before selecting a business plan template
The list of things to think about doesn’t stop there. You might also consider:
- Your available budget to choose between paid and free templates.
- Each option’s user-friendliness.
- Collaboration support. Can your team members log in and contribute to different sections from their devices?
- Available customer support, in case you need assistance understanding the tool or to report a problem.
- Each template’s compatibility with other popular software like Google Docs.
- Customization options.
Customizing templates for industry-specific needs
You’ll probably realize that, although most business plans follow very similar basic structures based on type, you’ll still need to make some changes to suit your business and your industry’s needs.
Analyze your industry to understand its unique challenges and opportunities to assess how they impact operations. Issues like technology, customer preferences, and regulations will affect some sections of the business plan.
If you’re venturing into the medical industry, for instance, you must demonstrate Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance in your business plan. Other industries like construction will have tight regulatory restrictions.
In fact, in pretty much any sector, industry-specific sections could be useful on your template. That could include standards, supply chain, intellectual property, certifications, emerging trends, or anything else really—whatever will make your plan clearer and more detailed.
Tools to enhance your business plan
From ready-made, customizable templates to AI-driven business planning, tech is your friend when you’re trying to get your business up and running.
Best software and tools for business planning
These resources offer some good business plan templates:
- US Small Business Administration (SBA)
- LivePlan
- SCORE
- Upmetrics
- Bplans
- Smartsheet
Is AI an option? Comparing AI-powered solutions and traditional software
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already changed business completely. AI-powered business plans are programmed not only to provide a template but also actually perform the task. This means you only need to feed in your requirements through text prompts, and the tools will populate the sections.
You can also opt for traditional methods, which usually offer the same sort of structure, and fill in the details yourself.
Which is better?
| AI-powered business plans | Traditional business plans |
| Save time by generating and analyzing drafts quickly. However, it lacks human touch and creativity. | Slower to generate drafts because you’ll start from nothing, but it’s a chance to create an interesting draft with a human touch.
Labor intensive, because you’ll manually conduct research and analyze data. |
| Identifies and relies on data, which is sometimes limited. | Allows you to incorporate insights and perspectives from experience that AI will miss. |
| AI algorithms are sometimes biased. | You’ll make an informed decision through experience and consulting with industry experts. |
| Easily automates repetitive tasks. | You’ll manually fill in sections even if the information is repetitive. |
| Offer limited customization. | Very easy to customize to fit industry needs. |
| Adaptive, supporting continuous planning; you can make changes instantly. | Less adaptive because you’ll have to do your research again to make any changes caused by current market trends and changes. |
| You may need to hire personnel experienced in AI tools and train existing staff. | You rely on your own, and your current employees’ or consultants’ experience and industry networks to prepare the document. |
Financial forecasting made easy
We’ve said that financial forecasts have numerous benefits for your business. How do you do it?
Step-by-step guide to creating financial forecasts
- Define the purpose, e.g., decide where to allocate funds between getting into new markets or introducing a new product.
- Analyze past financial data to establish a baseline一your starting point.
- Decide on a time frame. Most companies go for one-year forecasts. Too much further ahead than that and it can sometimes be little more than guesswork. Things can change a lot even in a year.
- Choose a financial forecast method.
- Monitor, analyze, and update the forecast as time goes by to reflect changes because forecasts are just predictions. And as we’ve said, things can change. And they will!
- Repeat the process to establish a trend.
Using a financial projection template to visualize your data
You’ll need a clear way to present and visualize data ranging from predicted expenses, profits, losses, and revenue. Utilize visualization tools like charts, maps, tables, and graphs to simplify information, identify trends, improve engagement in meetings, tell a story, and make data-driven decisions.
Top templates for financial projections and planning
- SCORE
- ProjectionHub
- HubSpot
- Templates.net
- Rows
If you’ve got a great idea for a business, get your business plan and financial projections right and you’ll give yourself the best possible chance of getting off to a solid start. Good luck!
FAQs
How do I write a financial forecast for a business plan?
The financial forecast should include expected expenses, profits, losses, and revenue detailed in balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow forecasts.
What are the essential points in a business plan template?
Executive summary, company description, market analysis, organizational structure, product and services, sales and marketing strategy, operations plan, human resources, financial projections, and an appendix for supporting documents.
What is a financial forecasting tool?
Software that helps predict and visualize business revenue, profits, losses, risks, and expenses.
What’s the best tool for forecasting?
There’s no specific best forecasting tool—it depends on your needs, budget, and industry. For example, there’s the decision on using free or paid tools. Have a look at some of the popular options in our guide above.
What’s a financial planning tool?
Software that businesses use to manage money, identify risks, quantify profits and losses, and plan for the future.
What is business planning and forecasting?
Business planning sets goals and strategies, analyzes the market, guides daily operations, and prepares for growth. Business forecasting looks into the future, making plans based on current trends using data analysis.