8 Business Plan Tools for Startups and Beyond

You have a brilliant business idea, and it’s time to introduce it to investors. Unlike the five-minute pitch you’ve been practicing for “Shark Tank,” investors and banks typically want more concrete information to open their vaults to provide funding. That’s where a formal business plan comes in.

A good business plan benefits new companies in two ways. First, it’s the document you’ll be asked for to present a business case to most lenders and potential investors. Additionally, it helps synthesize all your research and great ideas on paper. The process of completing your plan can act as a roadmap for how you manage all aspects of your business.

If you’re unsure how to write a business plan, you can start by getting a little help from those who’ve gone before you. We’ve compiled a list of business plan examples to help inspire you to create one for your business.

1. HubSpot’s One-Page Business Plan
2. SBA’s Business Plan Outline
3. LiveFlow’s Financial Planning Template
4. Score’s Business Plan Template for Startups
5. Growthink’s Business Plan Template
6. ThoughtCo’s Sample Business Plan
7. Panda Doc’s Free Business Plan Template
8. Culina Sample Business Plan

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1. HubSpot’s One-Page Business Plan

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HubSpot offers a free download of their One-Page Business Plan template that includes all the basics for businesses of any size. Their online template includes nine easy sections:

• Business opportunity
• Company description
• Team
• Industry analysis
• Target market
• Timeline
• Marketing plan
• Financial plan
• Funding requirements

The one-page plan template prompts you to outline basic business strategies, like the problem your product or service intends to solve for customers. The plan also helps you hone in on who your target market is, identify key facts about your company, understand your financial model, and know the funding you’ll need to start your business.

Plan highlights:

• Short and succinct
• Good for startups in the early funding stages
• Good starting point that can help direct a more complete plan

You can download the free template (available in a Word doc or PDF), fill out the document, add your logo, choose your font, and add color choices for a branded business plan that you can share with potential investors and other interested parties.

2. SBA’s Business Plan Outline

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The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers a pair of business plan outlines you can reference to create your own. SBA plans are broken into two categories—a lean startup and a traditional business plan. As a bonus, SBA’s guide includes information on calculating startup costs, establishing business credit, and funding your business.

The Lean Startup business plan takes a simplified approach but still includes the most important points of a standard plan. This is a brief, high-level view, and investors or lenders may require a more detailed plan. However, putting together a lean plan like this usually takes less time while still helping you focus on key goals and messaging.

Lean startup plan highlights:

• Good exercise for startups to synthesize business ideas
• Includes fictional completed sample for reference
• Unique chart format

The SBA Traditional Business plan outlines a standard professional business plan format and requires much greater detail and planning to complete. Sections the SBA guides you through include:

• Executive summary
• Company description
• Market analysis
• Organization and management
• Service or product line
• Marketing and sales
• Funding request
• Financial projections

Traditional business plan highlights:

• Small business focus
• Captures all standard categories
• Includes tips plus two example plans

The SBA website includes guidelines for crafting your message for each recommended section and downloadable examples of both plan types. The business plan samples are provided in Microsoft Word format for free.

3. LiveFlow’s Financial Planning Template

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LiveFlow’s free Financial Planning Template offers new business owners a shortcut for creating their financial plan and a tool for tracking progress every month. The template provides insights into successful strategies for managing business finances.

LiveFlow’s “P&L Budget vs. Actual” setup provides insight into key financial indicators like:

• Revenue
• Cost of sales
• Gross margin
• Operating expenses
• Operating profit margin
• Net profit
• Net profit margin

The site also includes more information about each indicator that might be helpful for new business owners.

The template includes a dashboard to get a quick overview of company financials like “runway,” burn rate, projected cash balance, gross margins, and other metrics. The process is pretty slick, as the dashboard is automatically populated from data from the rest of the sheet. You can connect directly to your company bank for additional detail.

Plan highlights:

• Financial planning focus
• Integrates with financial software
• Great for new business owners with less experience reporting financials

The template is in Google Sheets, so to use the spreadsheet, you’ll need to make your own Google Sheets copy and follow their step-by-step guide for using the template effectively.

You’ll also have to have the LiveFlow website extension, and while it does cost to use the template to its full potential, there’s a trial period where you can test it out.

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4. Score’s Business Plan Template for Startups

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Score’s Business Plan Template for a Startup Business helps the user lay the groundwork for their new business venture. Score’s template includes 11 worksheets, so when completed, you’ll have a detailed business model outlined. This can help you discover potential weaknesses in your plan, identify new opportunities, and convince potential customers, partners, and investors that you have a strong offering. While this template is designed for startups, it’s a 34-page document with a ton of detailed instruction and is adaptable enough to be appropriate for almost any industry.

Score’s template follows the more traditional type of business plan and includes sections for:

• Executive summary
• Company description
• Products and services
• Marketing plan
• Operational plan
• Management and organization
• Financial plan

Since this is designed for startups, it includes a section for startup expenses and capitalization.

The Score.org website has a step-by-step guide for completing each section of your business plan. Their guide prompts you with questions to help crystalize your message and keep you motivated to flesh out your business idea.

Plan highlights:

• Very detailed template with instructions (34 pages)
• Appropriate for large or small companies
• Adaptable for any industry

To use the Score template, download the template in Microsoft Word and follow the directions. The template has free pre-built sections, including a table of contents, a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), and an org chart.

5. Growthink’s Business Plan Template

Growthink offers both free and paid business plan templates. We’ll focus on the free version in this article, but feel free to take advantage of their paid version, which adds on more features, including automatically generating your five-year financial forecasts.

Growthink’s free business plan template follows the traditional structure, including:

• Executive summary
• Company overview
• Industry analysis
• Customer analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Marketing plan
• Operations plan
• Management team
• Financial plan

The website also includes a lot of helpful details and instructions to guide you through the process for each section.

‍Plan highlights:

• Follows traditional structure
• Offers insights and descriptions of each segment
• Paid option with five-year forecast

Growthink’s free template can be downloaded and used as a guide but won’t be as easy to customize. If you want to upgrade to the paid version, they’ll provide you with a completed plan that includes your branding. The paid version is priced at $97.

6. ThoughtCo’s Sample Business Plan

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If you’re looking for a concrete example of what a business plan should look like, check out ThoughtCo’s sample business plan. It’s a completed plan created for a fictional company called Acme Management Technology.

ThoughtCo’s example includes five sections:

• Executive summary
• Company summary
• Products and services
• Marketing analysis summary
• Strategy and implementation summary

Each completed section includes subsections and illustrates how a plan might be organized. It’s also helpful to have an example of the language, tone, and length that a business plan should include. Additionally, ThoughtCo’s sample gives examples of some financial information shared in a business plan.

Plan highlights:

• Good example for a technology business
• Helpful for understanding language and tone
• Includes subcategories for organization  

This is a useful, free website to research when putting together your own business plan.

7. PandaDoc’s Free Business Plan Template

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PandaDoc provides templates for a lot of business purposes, including a free business plan template. According to their website, this example has been downloaded over 5,050 times.

The PandaDoc plan follows a more traditional business plan style with sections for the:

• Executive summary
• Business description
• Mission statement
• Products and services
• Marketing plan
• Operations plan
• Management organization
• Financial plan (with a cash flow statement example)
• Call-to-action for a final push for funding from investors

PandaDoc’s sample also includes instructions on importing illustrative graphics from Excel to include in your plan.

Each section includes tips and tricks to help you create a compelling business plan. You can also take advantage of the PandaDoc service and complete online signatures that are legally binding and trackable.

Plan highlights:

• Web-based document
• Specialized templates for specific businesses
• Allows for legally binding signatures in documents
• Can add graphics to the template

PandaDoc shows you the entire document on their website, but you can also download a version to use. You can create a new account or log in with Google, LinkedIn, or Slack.  

8. Culina Sample Business Plan

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Culina’s sample business plan is an 18-page completed business plan example for a fictitious kitchen product. This example offers a great reference for both the content and design of a compelling business plan. The sample includes images and illustrations that give it a contemporary feel. This is only a plan example, so does not include additional guidance as others we have referenced do.

Because this sample plan is for a physical product, it’s also a good reference for the launch of an e-commerce company. The categories included in this sample include the basics of the traditional plan, but items are structured a bit differently. The plan nicely shows ways to present the differentiating factors that give the product its competitive advantage.

Plan highlights:

• Good sample plan for e-commerce businesses
• Illustrates a more creative design
• Sample includes example calls to action for investors

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Plan right with help

Writing a strong business plan is critical for any new business. Project Catalog™ offers new business owners a wide range of great business plan packages provided by professional business plan writers.

Upwork also helps freelance business plan writers find new opportunities and create win-win relationships. Create a free profile on Upwork to feature your work and drive new freelance business.

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Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this article. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation. Prices are current at the time of writing and may change over time based on each service’s offerings.