Your FREE business plan template

A business plan is a written document to help guide you through your business journey. It covers all areas of the business and helps you clearly define your goals.  

There is a lot to think about when you’re starting your own business, and important tasks can be missed. A business plan acts as a checklist-come-GPS, reminding you of crucial tasks whilst navigating you through your journey.  

Creating a business plan requires you to take a step back and think about the bigger picture, which can be great in helping you better understand the business you are trying to build, and the market in which it will operate.  

Your business plan is also an essential tool for raising finance for your company; whether it’s a bank or other lender, or a business angel or other equity investor, your funder will want to know all the details about your business so they can decide whether to back you. It is also important to have a business plan to keep you on track with your plans and will give you clear goals and ambition. 

• Executive summary - this should give an overview of your business and should hook your reader in with both a business summary and a financial summary.   
• Business overview - this section should describe your business and its products or services.  
• Market and competition – here you should share your market research, identify your customers and their needs, identify your competitors, and explain how your products or services will meet your customers’ needs in preference to your competitors.   
• Sales and marketing - this section is for you to detail your sales projections and specify how you will market your products or services.   
• Management – use this section to explain your experience and qualifications and how they will help your business. You should also include any other members of your management team or state any you plan on bringing on board.   
• Operations - look at what it will take to run the business and make sure you include things like, staff, premises, equipment, and suppliers.   
• Financial forecasting – this area should explain how much you plan on selling your products or services for and any overheads that come with this to make sure you are making a profit overall, if not them explain why this is the case and when you expect to see this change.   
• Financing - this section explains how much it will cost to start and run your business - include your start-up costs and how you plan on getting the funds, are you using savings, investment, or are you looking for funding?  
• Appendices - you may choose to include appendices such as further cost projections as appendices to help back up your plan.