Features
Part of Looking closely at plan fundamentals: choose the one reader and the decision first
Business plan software families: document builders, financial models, and pitch tools
What document builders, financial modeling tools and pitch deck software each do, who they suit, and seven tests to run with one real month of your numbers.
Three families of business plan software get sold as one category. They are not one category. A document builder, a financial modeling tool and a pitch deck tool do different jobs, and a contractor with a workbook and a bank loan needs a different one than a founder modelling subscriptions.
Here are named products in each family, what each does, who it suits, and how to test one in an evening.
What to take away
- LivePlan sits in the document builder familyguided sections, a built-in financial model, and a lender-facing export.
- ProjectionHub sells the modeling familydriver-based statements you can inspect, with no narrative layer to speak of.
- Slidebean and Canva cover the pitch family; neither builds a defensible cash forecast.
- A word processor plus a spreadsheet has produced most funded plans, and remains free.
- Test any tool with one real month of your own numbers before you pay.
- A document builder such as LivePlan suits an owner-operator who can write the words but does not want to build linked statements.
- A modeling tool such as ProjectionHub suits a borrower whose numbers are the hard part and who expects a lender to question them.
- A pitch tool such as Slidebean suits an investor conversation only; a bank will still ask for statements.
- For one name on a loan application, LivePlan covers the most ground, because the document and the statements come from the same place.
The document builders
LivePlan (Palo Alto Software) is the best-known product in this family. It walks you through the section order, prompts each part, and produces a formatted document with a financial model attached.
The model builds an income statement, balance sheet and cash flow from your inputs, and the output is designed to be printed for a lender. It suits an owner-operator who can write but does not want to build linked statements from scratch.
Pricing is a monthly subscription with a discount for annual payment. Entry tiers have typically run in the low tens of dollars per month on annual billing, and the monthly rate is higher. Check the current tiers on the vendor's page, because they move.
BizPlan (formerly Growthink's tool) is a lighter builder with a drag-and-drop section layout and a pitch deck generator bolted on. It suits a founder who wants something presentable quickly. The financial side is thinner than LivePlan's.
Enloop writes a plan and scores it against a benchmark, and its free tier covers one plan. The scoring is the product's own opinion, not a lender's. Use it for structure, not for validation.
Planful and Tarkenton Plans sit at the consultant end: template-driven documents, often sold with review. They suit buyers who want a person involved.
The financial modeling tools
ProjectionHub is the clearest example of the modeling family. You enter drivers (units, price, cost per unit, hiring, payment terms) and it produces three linked statements. Because the inputs are visible, you can defend a figure when a lender asks where it came from, which is the standard the projections guide sets out.
It suits a borrower whose numbers are the hard part.
Pricing is tiered by plan type, with one-off purchase options for a single projection. Entry tiers have typically run in the tens of dollars per month, and the one-off price depends on how many statements and scenarios you need. Check the current figures on the vendor's page.
Causal and Runway build driver-based models with a cleaner interface and more scenario work. They are built for operating businesses and startups rather than loan applications, so expect to assemble the lender-facing document yourself.
Excel and Google Sheets belong in this family. A template from a plan fundamentals template plus your own formulas is the cheapest defensible model there is, provided you can build it.
The pitch and presentation tools
Slidebean turns a plan into an investor deck and does the design work for you. It has a free tier, and its paid tiers have typically run in the tens of dollars per month. Canva does the same with a wider template library. Pitch is built for team collaboration on decks.
All three are for the reader who wants slides, not statements. None of them will produce a balance sheet that reconciles to your cash flow, and a bank will ask for one.
The comparison, side by side
Family
- LivePlan
- Document builder
- BizPlan
- Document builder
- Enloop
- Document builder
- ProjectionHub
- Financial modeling
- Causal, Runway
- Financial modeling
- Excel, Sheets
- Financial modeling
- Slidebean, Canva, Pitch
- Pitch
What it does
- LivePlan
- Guided sections plus a linked financial model
- BizPlan
- Section layout and a deck generator
- Enloop
- Writes and scores a plan
- ProjectionHub
- Driver-based three-statement model
- Causal, Runway
- Scenario and driver modelling
- Excel, Sheets
- Anything you can build
- Slidebean, Canva, Pitch
- Plan to deck
Suits
- LivePlan
- Owner-operators writing for a lender
- BizPlan
- Founders wanting speed
- Enloop
- First structure, free tier
- ProjectionHub
- Borrowers whose numbers are the hard part
- Causal, Runway
- Operating businesses
- Excel, Sheets
- Anyone who can build it
- Slidebean, Canva, Pitch
- Investor conversations
Pricing model
- LivePlan
- Monthly subscription, annual discount
- BizPlan
- Monthly or annual
- Enloop
- Free tier, paid tiers
- ProjectionHub
- Tiered by plan type, one-off option
- Causal, Runway
- Monthly subscription
- Excel, Sheets
- Free or licence
- Slidebean, Canva, Pitch
- Monthly subscription
Seven tests to apply to any tool
Can you see the arithmetic?
Does it produce all three statements, and do they reconcile?
Can you model how your business actually earns?
Can you get your data out?
Does it handle timing?
Who can see your data, and what happens when you stop paying?
Is there a human behind it?
Worked example: one real month
Do not evaluate on a demo. Take one real month of your business, or one carefully specified month of the business you intend to start. Enter it properly with these elements:
One real month
- your prices
- your costs
- payroll with employment costs on top
- your payment timing
- any equipment purchase or loan payment falling in that month
Then check five things.
One real month
- Does the closing cash figure match what you calculate by hand? If not, find out why before trusting anything else.
- Change one input, such as price or volume, and see whether the effect on cash is what you expect. This catches hidden smoothing.
- Add a cost that happens once a year. Many tools spread it, which hides the month that hurts.
- Export everything and open it elsewhere.
- Print the financial pages and read them as a stranger would.
A tool that survives that evening is probably fine. One that fails any of the five will fail in front of a lender instead.
On generated drafts
Most tools in this category now offer to write sections for you. The prose arrives generic, assembled from the same patterns as everyone else's, and people who read plans for a living recognize it immediately.
It is most convincing in the sections that matter least, because it does not know your prices, your suppliers, or the catchment that the market section is built from.
It will also produce numbers if you let it. Those numbers are not yours and are not evidence.
Used as a first draft to be cut hard, it saves time. Used as the document, it produces the thing this category of writing has already been ruined by.
Costs to check for yourself
Costs to verify yourself
- Monthly or annual billing?
- Are needed features on the priced tier?
- How many seats, and cost of a second?
- Charge per plan or per business?
- Renewal price after introductory period?
- How much notice to cancel?
Whether billing is monthly or annual, and whether the advertised figure assumes annual payment. Whether the features you need sit on the tier you priced.
How many seats you get and what a second person costs. Whether there is a charge per plan or per business.
What renewal looks like after any introductory period, and how much notice cancellation requires.
Check whether a trial is time-limited or feature-limited, how long it runs, and whether any refund window exists after you pay.
Then compare the annual cost against an hour or two of your accountant's time, which may achieve the same thing with better answers.
When to stop shopping
When the tool does not obstruct the work, stop. Nobody has been declined for a loan because of which software produced the document, and comparing tools is a comfortable way to avoid the hard part, which is deciding what your prices, capacity and assumptions actually are.
Those decisions are the plan. The software is a place to type them. Work through the fundamentals first, and the tool choice mostly answers itself.
Common questions
Is a free tool good enough?
Often, for the document. Free templates from advisory organizations are acceptable to lenders, and a spreadsheet you build yourself is a real model. The paid case is for a financial model you could not build alone.
Will using a plan tool improve my chances of funding?
No. The content decides that. A tool can prevent a formatting problem and catch a missing statement; neither is what applications turn on.
Should I let the tool file or submit anything for me?
Understand exactly what is being submitted, to whom, and what it costs, before agreeing. You are responsible for the accuracy of anything filed in your business's name.
What about industry-specific tools?
They can be worth it where the industry's driver is unusual, such as construction billing stages or occupancy-based services. Apply the same one-month test; the industry label does not exempt a tool from showing its arithmetic.
