Start Here > Preparing a Basic/Short Plan
By design, the Free-Plan Business Plan Guide & Template is aimed at helping new and established businesses to produce comprehensive business plans, most probably, for raising external finance or for guiding management or securing internal approvals within a largish organisation.
However, the supplied Free-Plan Template (FREE-PLAN_TEMPLATE.DOC) can also be used to help produce (a) a basic/short plan for a very small or "home-based" business or (b) a "long" executive summary for a larger business as follows:
| 1. | Delete headings for all subsections and sub-subsections within the body of the Template so that you are only left with the Cover Page, Table of Contents and Basic Information pages plus headings for the 14 main sections. Do not delete any headings within the Table of Contents as these will be updated automatically to reflect your deletions in the Template's body. Refer to Using the Free-Plan Template for more help on this process. |
| 2. | Write a maximum of one page for each main section as defined in the Table of Contents except possibly for 6. Profiles of Target Markets and 11. Financial Projections which could each run to 2-3 pages. |
| 3. | Use sub-headings in this Guide to determine matters to be addressed within each main section. For example, aim to cover each of the sub-headings within 2-3 paragraphs, along with simple tables and charts. It is better to cover all key topics briefly rather than omit them. |
Using this approach, it should be possible to draft a plan of under 15-20 pages. See Length of a Business Plan for more guidance.
If planning to use Exl-Plan to help generate financial projections for this plan, look at one of the more simple versions such as Basic, Micro or Lite. Get more detailed information and free trial downloads for these versions.
For further discussion on different types of plans and their lengths, see the online white paper on Insights into Business Planning.
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