LivePlan for Creative Plans

Saturday is business tips and tools day. Today’s tool is LivePlan which is a great tool to having a “working” business plan. Oh, by the way I like to call our business plans our creative plans. As we are going into the new year and if you are thinking of starting a business this year, this is a must have software.

A lot of times business owners write a business plan and then it gets stuffed away and it’s never used again. That my friends is a big mistake, because a creative plan is actually your road map to achieve the goals that you have set before you.

With live plan its easy to change and update things as you go, so your plan is never stagnated and it’s always relevant. When preparing our creative plans there is a lot of pre-work that needs to be done prior to putting everything together. So, in the program 8-weeks to an awesome online business, we spend quite a bit of time with this software program and doing the pre work that makes this a fun and simple process. Then once we get to live plan you can write your creative plan typically in a few hours or less!

But for now, let’s talk about the benefits of LivePlan!  

• The number one thing I love about this software is that it will cut down your creative planning time to only a few hours vs months.
• It’s really simple to use and has a lot of great features.
• There are step-by-step instructions as soon as you login.
• Your business planning process is made easy with prompts, definitions of key terms, and video and text tutorials built right into LivePlan.
• There are built in creative plans that you can actually copy and paste sections to use in your own plan.
• There is example content for every text item in your business plan that again you can copy and paste.
• This here is the best also: With LivePlan, you don’t have to worry about navigating complex spreadsheets or breaking formulas in Excel.
• LivePlan takes you step-by-step through the process of creating the powerful financial reports you need for your business plan—even if you don’t have prior business experience.
• It also provides visually appealing charts and graphs for the financials.
• It doesn’t matter what type of business you are starting LivePlan supports all popular forecasting options including subscription revenue, individual product sales, hourly rates, and more.
• Drag and drop financial forecasting, this interface makes creating budgets and forecasts easy. Just click and drag to create your budget and see how your budget and forecast changes with the seasons.
• LivePlan helps you create the monthly and annual budgets you need for your business plan.
• LivePlan walks you step-by-step through the process—no accounting knowledge required.
• Your creative plan will be complete and correct—guaranteed by LivePlan.
• LivePlan automatically creates all the financial tables that banks and investors expect, in a format approved by all common funding sources, from SBA lenders to Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Also for what you need on a daily basis.
  • Revenue Forecast
  • Expense Budget
  • Profit & Loss
  • Balance Sheet
  • Cash Flow
  • Personnel Plan
  • Asset Purchases
  • Direct Costs
  • Funding Sources
  • Key Financial Assumptions

Remember I mentioned that the creative plan is a working plan, this is where LivePlan really helps:

• Get the insights you need to make the right decisions. For your business to succeed, you need to know your goals and see your progress in real-time.
• Budgeting and forecasting made easy; LivePlan’s business dashboard gives you the insights you need in a format that’s simple to understand yet has the power you need.
• Connect your accounting software, like QuickBooks or Xero, and you’ll get instant insights into your business.
• Reach your goals faster by tracking your progress. Companies grow 30 percent faster when they track their progress towards their financial goals.
• With LivePlan’s Dashboard, you get a simple way to do just this. You can easily monitor your revenue, scrutinize your expenses, and make adjustments to ensure you reach your goals.
• Make sense of the numbers without using spreadsheets, you can quickly build visual reports and summaries that show what your financial data really means—all without spreadsheets

This was just a few of the things that LivePlan offers as mentioned above we dive into this program in depth in the program 8-weeks to an awesome online business. But if you don’t join us in this program, I wanted to give you a bit of relief knowing there is a way to simplify your creative plan! Also, it’s one of the best ways that I have found to have that working creative plan that is relevant and up to date.

Remember this is our road map not something that is written once and then forgotten about and that is why this program is called LivePlan!