Describe Your Dream Project in Twenty Pages

What is one of the very first software that any business needs? No, not Accounting software. Even before you are looking for accounting software, even before you have started your business. Let us say, you just met with your banker seeking a loan or met with your investor seeking equity.

You presented an outline of your business. Your experience and commitment as well as passion and potential appealed to them. The next thing you know they want to see a Business Plan. Great, they liked your idea! Shucks, you don't know the first thing about a Business Plan.

You look at commercial software and you are, naturally, worried. You have not yet started your business. There is no revenue yet. And yet expenses seem to be piling up.

Relax! Free open source software can help.

Download Free Templates from SCORE...

SCORE is the US Small Business Administration (SBA) partner helping tens of thousands of start-ups every year. SCORE has published a set of templates for creating a Business Plan. You can download free business plan templates from SCORE. You will find that these templates have detailed instructions on how to create a Business Plan.

...And Additional Help from SBA

The US Small Business Administration, SBA provides free resources for business plan for start-ups and small businesses. These include an outline of how to write a business plan, FAQs, detailed step-by-step explanation to help write your plan and a video tutorial.

What software do you need to use these templates? The end result of your Business Plan preparation effort will be a text document that describes your business and one or more spreadsheets that show financial projections. While you are not required to do so, it is also a good idea to prepare a presentation so that you can use that to make quick presentations to busy bankers and investors.

Use Free Open Source Software to Work on the Templates

For creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations you need an office package. These can be done using free open source OpenOffice. You can get more details in our OpenOffice page.

The SCORE Business Plan template is in Microsoft Word format and has the file extension .doc. This template has links to the spreadsheet templates, which are in Microsoft Excel format with extension .xls. However, you can open these files in OpenOffice and work on them.

Please read our Precautions FAQ before downloading.