Business plan for a startup. Resources for developing business plans online

Analytical reviews of programs for drawing up business plans. Comparison of software products, their strengths and weaknesses, applicability for specific tasks and comments from specialists using these programs.

• Business Plan PL program
• COMFAR program
• Project Expert program
• Business Plan PL program
• Alt-Invest program

The usability of COMFAR is good, the shell is carefully thought out and quite user-friendly. When entering initial data and viewing results, nested tables are used, the headings of which are designed in the form of diagrams built according to understandable laws.
In the latest versions of the COMFAR program, it has become possible to set the duration of the planning interval. Added the ability to pay in several currencies (the total number of currencies described in each option can reach twenty). The theoretical advantage of the program is also the ability to determine two rates of the main and additional currencies, monitored simultaneously. COMFAR presents such rates under the names "local" and "foreign", which in domestic terms is equivalent to the official exchange rate and the rate of the so-called "black market" currency.
There is no tax description block in the program, which is undoubtedly the main disadvantage of the COMFAR program. It is not entirely clear why this block is missing; apparently a number of simplifications carried out by the developers were aimed at universalizing the program, which was detrimental to functionality. The assumptions adopted in the system make it impossible to adequately describe the formation of inventories, the use of complex payment schemes for raw materials and materials, and non-standard schemes for marketing manufactured products. The mentioned negative aspects of COMFAR do not allow us to recommend it as a system for everyday business planning.
The service support of the COMFAR product causes quite a lot of inconvenience to users. Of course, Russian developers of business planning programs provide better service.
Based on the above, we can recommend purchasing COMFAR in the case of direct work with a foreign investment institution that accepts business plans only in the format of this system for consideration. In a situation where current or investment planning must take into account domestic specifics, COMFAR does not have the necessary effectiveness due to its simplicity and poor adaptation to the realities of the Russian market. To summarize, we can confidently say that in the situation considered, when drawing up a business plan, it would be more rational to use Russian software developments.
Project Expert program
The Project Expert program can be called the most functional and convenient today. For professionals in drawing up business plans, the release of a version of the program with the designation “Professional” was a long-awaited moment.

The Project Expert program can be called the most functional and convenient today. For professionals in drawing up business plans, the release of a version of the program with the designation “Professional” was a long-awaited moment. Separately, it should be noted the excellent functional equipment of the system. Today, almost all existing tasks can be accurately described by the system. A significant step forward, compared to versions 4.0 and 4.2, has been made in this direction in the new versions. This change in functionality affected the compatibility of versions: calculations performed on versions 4.* cannot be used in the new Project Expert 5.0.
All the work of the system is done in a simple and understandable manner, even for a layman who has a general understanding of building a business plan. Managing all elements significantly minimizes the risk of missing important input due to the fact that the input data is specified in stages.
The strictly defined planning interval is one day, unlike some other programs. In turn, the interval for presenting results is specified by the user and can be changed discretely (month, quarter, year). You can select an unlimited number of such intervals. The system has a built-in real calendar that allows calculations to be made taking into account the actual number of days in each month.
The "Starting Balance" card provides the user with ample opportunities, allowing the development of investment projects of any level of complexity, based on any initial indicators of an operating enterprise.
The undoubted advantage of Project Expert over the COMFAR system is its flexible design for specifying taxes. Its versatility makes it easy to set both the tax base and all necessary taxes. Let us note that the system developed by specialists from UNIDO is much less functional in this regard.
Another convenient feature of Project Expert is a well-thought-out system for working with value added tax. The various VAT accounting and write-off schemes provided in the program ensure the correctness of calculations even in complex and confusing cases.
Drawing up a network plan is another unique feature of Project Expert. This function of the system allows you to successfully calculate investment projects that allow a combination of related and parallel investment stages. Despite the relative cumbersomeness of the interface of this process, the result is worth it. Not all programs for drawing up business plans have this functionality, and in Project Expert it is organized very well.
Certain difficulties often arise with the perception of the internal logic of the “Operational Plan” block. Project Expert strictly subordinates the production plan to the sales plan, not allowing the enterprise's capacities to "work for the warehouse." At the same time, the production of production volumes is provided based on the sales program and a predetermined stock of finished products. To successfully work with this section, you need to understand these points and then the work turns out to be quite simple. In general, taking into account the complexity of the software product itself and the tasks it solves, one cannot expect the program to be simple and understandable in everything.
This program is not without its shortcomings. Many experts call the section related to financing the weak point of Project Expert. The organization of the use of borrowed funds is presented here in the form of obtaining a certain number of loans at a fixed rate for a given period, which significantly complicates the work with funds raised through loans such as open lines of credit. Despite the theoretical possibility of describing any type of lending, entering information about loans requires significant time, and changing project parameters leads to the fact that the adjustment of the financial scheme also has to be done independently.
The results and analysis sections of the project are quite well done. The report generation process allows you to print any tables and graphs or export them to Word. The results can be presented in both Russian and English. Output forms provide the ability to customize fonts, but their fairly large size in Word format makes it necessary to edit them additionally in an external text editor. A general recommendation for Project Expert users is to transfer some tables to Microsoft Excel or another program.
The Project Expert 5.0 Professional version, in addition to basic functions, also makes it possible to monitor the real state of the project and the deviation of the actual indicators of the enterprise from the planned ones. The section “Updating results” serves this purpose. This approach makes the use of the system effective both in operational and investment business planning.
Project Expert is a closed system - the user cannot influence the calculation algorithm independently. Therefore, service support with the ability to quickly receive corrected and new versions of the program is extremely important. The developer of the system, Pro-Invest Consulting, pays special attention to the qualified work of the hotline and the prompt correction of errors and shortcomings noticed in the program. The program comes with a well-written and clearly laid out user manual. The developer has provided the ability to update the program version via the Internet. Suggestions for improving the program's performance are accepted by email. System protection from unauthorized access to data is at the proper level. Project Expert also provides for multi-user work on a corporate network.
In general, the Project Expert 5.0 Professional program has established itself as a powerful tool for solving all problems arising in the process of investment and operational planning.
Alt-Invest program
Unlike many analogues, this program is “open” and uses the Microsoft Excel operating environment. This provides both advantages (in terms of flexibility, the ability to customize the system for yourself) and obvious disadvantages.

Unlike many analogues, this program is “open” and uses the Microsoft Excel operating environment. This provides both advantages (in terms of flexibility, the ability to customize the system for yourself) and obvious disadvantages. The program has functionality that is already characteristic of other software packages. In addition, the user is offered a number of additional features. In order to expand the scope of application, the developer presents two versions of the program: “Alt-Invest-Prim” - for express performance assessment and “Alt-Invest” - for in-depth calculations.
The diverse capabilities of these software products are a consequence of the significant flexibility of the structure and set of settings. Both versions implement the possibility of unlimited change in the duration of the planning interval: calculations are possible both in terms of weeks and “by day,” which significantly simplifies the current planning of the enterprise’s activities. The undoubted advantages of the program are the convenient adjustment of output forms by the user and an unlimited number of any additional graphs and tables. In the version of the Alt-Invest 2.0 system, the developer also significantly reduced the labor intensity of changing data tables when adjusting the duration of the planning interval, which was a significant drawback when changing “manually” some of the parameters over the entire planning horizon. Let us note that the Alt-Prim program has not undergone such positive changes.
The "Prime" version operates in only one currency for settlements, while the main version has the ability to work with two monetary systems. Alt-Invest uses a complete description of the tax field, although the presentation of cash flows for VAT is not well implemented. The lack of highlighting VAT as a separate line in Alt-Prima also cannot be called functionally justified. The calculation algorithms are designed in such a way that changing them is a complex and time-consuming task. Although the openness of the system implies that the user can change these algorithms, in fact it is extremely difficult to do this.
Calculating the optimal lending schedule is a clear advantage of the Alt-Invest-Prim program; in analogues this function is clearly implemented worse. A borrowing schedule is constructed for the case when there is no external financing, depending on the cash shortage at each planning interval. This algorithm is a very convenient forecasting tool for financing like a credit line. Note that for some reason it is missing in the main version of the program.
Flexible settings of this open system allow you to accurately describe any parameters of the enterprise for which a business plan is being created. The Alt-Invest software product, unlike other programs, makes it possible to set almost all initial data not only as constants, but also as variables or complex functions, which is a consequence of the openness of the system. At the same time, we note that the corrections made require significant qualifications from the user, as mentioned above. In this regard, technical support for the product is very important. The quality of support can be rated as a solid four, that is, it is possible to improve the quality of support. Its improvement will make it possible to satisfy the needs of those clients who do not have sufficiently deep knowledge in this area. And this will expand the audience of the software product and capture a new segment of the market for software products in the field of business planning.
The Alt-Invest and Alt-Prim systems are powerful multi-purpose complexes designed for a wide range of clients. Inexperienced users, without making changes to the algorithms, can use them for express analysis and approximate calculations. Professionals will be glad to be able to adjust algorithms to suit their individual tasks, which is ideal for business planning in large enterprises.

How to choose a business plan program

In order to write a business plan, you can use a special program. The choice of program depends on what kind of business plan you need to create.
If you only need a feasibility study, then you can use a product from ROFER, a program called “business plan M” or some similar program.
The programs Business Plan PL text (ROFER) and Success Success (Dynamic Pathways Company) and the like are necessary for creating a business plan containing recommendations, samples and templates. These programs will help you keep all your information short and clear, so your business partners will take you seriously.
The previous program does not contain a calculation part, so if you need to create a fully functional business plan, we recommend that you pay attention to the following business plan writing systems: Project Expert (Proinvest-IT), PL business plan (ROFER), INEC-Analyst (INEK) , Alt-Invest (ALT).
The advantages of these programs are that you will be able to choose a development strategy suitable for your enterprise, determine how this project will affect the activities of the enterprise, and you will also be able to determine overall performance indicators and payback period.
Such a business plan will not allow you to fall on your face, because, firstly, it will comply with international standards, and secondly, you will be able to indicate the effectiveness of the investments of all participants separately. You can also determine the payback period.
This system will give you the opportunity to analyze expected costs and profits, what is the minimum possible volume of production and what will be the maximum costs.

The process of constructing a financial model of an investment project or the entire activity of an enterprise is the most labor-intensive and requires preparatory work to collect and analyze initial data. With the Project Expert system, you do not need either deep knowledge of mathematics or programming skills - you only need to know the business being described well.

The Project Expert system allows you to develop a financial model of a company in a short time. To describe the project and the company, you will need to enter the following initial data: the start date and duration of the project, a list of products and services planned for release, the multi-level structure of the company down to each division and product.

Sales plan

To model it in Project Expert, you will need to enter a list of products, indicate the prices for each product and its estimated sales volume. The system allows you to take into account additional information about the impact of seasonality on the price, and set a scheme according to which the price of a particular product will be formed throughout the project. In the process of developing a sales strategy in Project Expert, time factors are taken into account, such as: the time of sale of the product (service), the delay in payment after delivery of the product, as well as the terms of payment for the product or service of the consumer (in fact, with prepayment or on credit).

When modeling sales, you take into account the volume of warehouse stocks of finished products and their shelf life, the percentage of losses during the sale of products, etc. The system also allows you to reflect the costs of advertising and promoting products on the market.

You can evaluate the benefits of each sales scheme by analyzing the selected sales conditions.

Creating mathematical relationships between product sales and other factors, for example, the size of demand, using the “Formula” mechanism allows you to automate the calculation of sales volumes and describe an individual strategy for the sale of products and services.

Production plan

The system allows you to describe the production schedule and various types of costs, connecting the selected parameters of the enterprise’s financial model with a complex mathematical relationship, for example, when modeling the volume of production of a product, based on the capabilities of the enterprise and the forecast market capacity.

The production plan can be generated automatically by the system depending on the planned sales volumes. Project Expert allows you to establish the dependence of the production plan on other factors, for example, on the capacity of the production equipment used.

Project investment plan

The pre-investment and investment phases of any project require careful consideration of the work schedule and the volume of required investments. To do this, Project Expert generates a plan for initial capital investments and preparatory work - a GANTT diagram.

The system is quite flexible in presenting project data, allowing you to either link all stages of investment and further operational activities, or describe these stages of the project independently. The section interface is well known to those who have already worked with project management systems such as MS Project or Primavera SureTrack. In the Project Expert system, the description of the time characteristics of the project is not inferior to the listed network planning systems. In this case, it is the financial aspects of the project’s investment plan that are assessed - the cost of preparatory work, the resources used, the assets created and the features of investment accounting. An example of a schedule is shown in Fig. 11.

The program helps to determine the stages of work and establish the relationships between them, indicate the resources used to complete these stages, the procedure for their payment, and capitalize the investments made.

If the stages of pre-production are associated with the construction of buildings, the acquisition of equipment, land or other fixed assets, Project Expert allows you to choose the methods and timing of their depreciation: by production, linearly, by residual value, by scheme. The system provides for accounting for the revaluation of assets, their sale, as well as additional investments.

Description of the economic environment

With the Project Expert analytical system, you can easily describe the financial and economic environment in which the project is planned to be implemented, and also predict changes in the economic environment.

Often, when creating a project, the task is to account for cash flows not only in national currency, but also in foreign currency, for example, when making import-export transactions. To do this, the system provides the ability to select the main and additional currencies of the project. You set the exchange rate at the beginning of the project and forecast its dynamics. The system automatically converts the results of project calculations in rubles into the equivalent in a more stable currency, which makes it possible to take into account the factor of instability of the national currency exchange rate in the analysis. The presence of a second project currency is a necessary condition for the correct calculation of investment performance indicators. The system can describe a complex exchange rate inflation scheme by using formulas to link changes in the rates of the main and additional currencies of the project with different bases.

The system provides you with the opportunity to form an inflationary picture of an investment project. You only set individual inflation indicators and trends in their changes in the form of annual and monthly indicators that characterize a certain group (cost item), as well as individual types of products and services.

Project Expert helps you reflect the specifics of the tax system. The system provides a list of the main types of taxes established by Russian legislation, taking into account the current payment rates for the proposed taxes, and also allows you to select the tax base from the proposed list and independently determine it for any tax using a formula. For example, for sales tax, the “tax included in the price” base is selected, and a custom description of the tax environment allows you to enter new types of taxes, conditions for their calculation and payment, up to individual taxes for each item of income and expenses, including the “tax holiday” regime.

To model a company with a project, you will need to take into account its financial condition at the start of the project - a detailed description of its assets and liabilities in the aggregated balance sheet.

What does a new entrepreneur need? A detailed and thoroughly thought out business plan. Not every young businessman knows how to do this. However, computer technology can come to his aid. A program for drawing up a business plan will be a real lifesaver.

What special applications can do

What is the appeal of such applications? Can they really help at the initial stage of a project? This is true. Special programs for drawing up a business plan can significantly simplify the procedure for its development. They enable:

• use a ready-made template;
• use special tools aimed at calculating various indicators;
• adopt standard plans that can serve as a quality example.

Modern software for creating a business plan is not the only solution. There are several applications of this type. Thanks to this, every budding entrepreneur will be able to choose exactly the option that ideally suits his requirements.

The virtual project Project Expert deserves special attention. The program is the most popular and popular in this area. The project is ideal for young entrepreneurs. This business plan writing software is characterized by:

• extreme simplicity;
• amazingly detailed information presented in a help format;
• intuitively understandable interface;
• automatic calculation of diagrams and construction of graphs.

In addition, Project Expert allows you to easily calculate most performance indicators. The project also offers entrepreneurs a unique opportunity: the application simulates the activities of not only ordinary small companies, but also holding companies. To use the full functionality of Project Expert, you will need to purchase a license. Its cost is 50 thousand rubles.

Simple and easy projects for beginners

When naming various programs for a business plan, one cannot ignore Business Plan PL. This unique product is able to quickly create a professional business plan, and the result can be oriented not only for internal, but also for external use. The application includes several versions of algorithms with calculations of financial parameters. The program creates reports automatically. The price of the licensed product is only 13 thousand rubles.

Another great business plan program is called Business Planning Workshop. What is the appeal of this product? This solution:

• is complex;
• includes several business plan layouts;
• uses many templates for calculations;
• allows you to use 67 ready-made real projects.

In addition, the innovative computer “Business Planning Workshop” includes several tools that allow you to correctly assess financial performance in relation to financial statements. For all its convenience, this program for drawing up a business plan in a licensed format will cost only 4,000 rubles.

The most effective products

The virtual product COMFAR III Expert deserves special attention. This innovative computer program is great for creating business projects. It uses generally recognized UNIDO standards. The advantages of the product include:

• excellent documentation;
• a detailed analysis methodology;
• intuitively simple interface.

There is only one downside - this application is unable to take into account Russian tax legislation. It is also impossible not to note the rather high cost of the licensed version. It is about 127,000 rubles.

Productive solutions

When naming other modern software products for drawing up a business plan, one cannot ignore the Business Plan Pro project. It is developed by the Palo Alto Software brand. The key feature, which is also its advantage, is the ability to adjust the project at any time. At the same time, the user can always take into account the interests of the investor directly online.

Other advantages of the modern application include excellent documentation and the presence of over 4 hundred ready-made business products that the user can find in the program database. The cost of the licensed version is quite affordable - it is about 6 thousand rubles.

What other programs for drawing up business plans are worth mentioning? A quality product that deserves attention is Alt Invest. This application was developed by the domestic company "Alt". A software product of this type is an excellent solution for effectively performing a high-quality analysis of investment projects, designing feasibility studies and business plans. At the same time, the application is adapted to Russian realities, including accounting reporting and taxation.

A huge number of software products have been created in the virtual world that are designed to significantly facilitate the activities of novice entrepreneurs. The main thing is to choose the right application and use it correctly.

How to write a business plan: Video

The Project Expert program is used to prepare investment projects without financial problems, generate financial reports for interested parties and justify the interest of investors.

The latest version of Project Expert can be downloaded for free in Russian, and its further application undoubtedly will help with obtaining optimal solutions for business development, with the development of a business plan regarding finances and with a comprehensive assessment of the project.

Development is carried out in several stages:

• Financial modeling with forecasting.
• Justification on its basis of the size of investments and assets.
• Formation of a plan for obtaining funds.
• Determining the effectiveness and feasibility of the project, a set of risks.
• Formation of a business plan, other reports.
• Adjustments, forecast of results/costs ratio.

Having developed your own project in Project Expert, you will be able to provide a list of clear and justified advantages for the investor, and confirm the effectiveness of investments with calculations. The application provides an analysis of divisions by areas of profitability of planned production. You will be able to view possible options for business development and anticipate possible risks, as well as make predictive assessments in various areas.

In the Gantt view, you'll see when a task started and ended, its relationships, resources used, and much more. You can save reports in PDF and HTML formats.

Project Expert also complies with international standards and takes into account economic reality. The generated reports are well structured and understandable to customers and developers.

Every entrepreneur and aspiring businessman should know that an important part of working in the market segment is the correct adherence to a business plan, which you can write yourself by downloading a special free program designed for this purpose. It is to this important and significant issue for most businessmen that I would like to devote the lines of my short review article. The main purpose of the announced application, as you understand from the title of this article, is to help home-grown businessmen who want to enter the market and occupy a free niche there without any barriers or restrictions. But to achieve this, you see, is extremely difficult, not to say problematic and difficult!

So, the business plan program that we are talking about is an amazingly convenient application that allows for completely free downloading without restrictions and the need for registration, and this, you see, is a rather significant advantage. An important advantage of this application, which, by the way, is small in megabytes, is the ability to use it in almost any area of ​​business activity. The main thing is to have in your head an idea of ​​​​the principles of drawing up a business plan, so that it really helps you achieve your goal easily and naturally.

Business plan program free download to your personal computer