Reviews
Part of Looking closely at plan fundamentals: choose the one reader and the decision first
Plan fundamentals template with the blanks filled in
A plan template gives you section order and prompts, never content: the fields yours must contain, the order to fill them in, and how to strip the template voice.
A template is an order of operations. It tells you which sections exist and roughly what belongs in each. That is genuinely useful, and it is all it does. The content, the numbers and the judgment are yours, and a template that appears to supply them is supplying something you should not use.
Free templates and section prompts are published by the Small Business Administration, and an SBA-funded development center will sit down with a draft at no charge. Any of them will do. The choice matters far less than what you do with it.
What to take away
- If the one you downloaded is missing any of these, add them.
- Template prose has a recognizable soundbroad, hedged, and applicable to anything.
- Before formatting anything, ask who reads it and what they require.
- Put a version number and a date on the cover and in the file name.
What a template actually gives you
A section order a reader expects. Reviewers read plans in a familiar sequence and get irritated when they have to hunt. Following a conventional order costs nothing and saves the reader time.
What a template gives you
- A section order a reader expects
- Prompts you would otherwise skip
- A financial workbook with linked statements
- A stopping point
Prompts you would otherwise skip. Nobody forgets the product section. People forget key-person risk, the license status, and the working capital requirement. A good template asks about them.
A financial workbook with the statements already linked. This is the most valuable part, when it exists. Building three linked statements from a blank spreadsheet is where most self-built models acquire their errors, and what those statements have to show is set out in the projections guide.
A stopping point. Templates are finite. Without one, plans expand until the writer is exhausted rather than until the argument is complete.
What it cannot give you
It cannot give you your numbers, your evidence, your customers, or the reasoning that connects them. It also cannot tell you which sections matter for your particular reader, which is a decision only you can make.
The specific danger is the filled-in example text some templates ship with. Left in place, edited lightly, it produces a plan that reads like every other plan built from that template, and experienced reviewers have read hundreds. They notice. Delete the sample text before you start, so there is nothing to accidentally leave behind.
Fill it in out of order
The template's order is for the reader. Your working order should be different, because some sections depend on others.
Fill it in out of order
- Unit of sale and its cost
- Capacity and its constraint
- Revenue build
- Costs and timing
- Operating sections
- Funding request
- Executive summary last
- Start with the unit of sale and its cost.What a customer buys, and what one costs you to deliver. Everything downstream needs this.
- Then capacity.How many of those you can produce or serve in a period, with the constraint named. The operations section is where that number gets worked out.
- Then the revenue build.Capacity or reach, times conversion, times price. This is the number the rest of the plan has to support.
- Then costs and timing.Fixed, variable, and the ones that step up at a threshold. Then when the money actually moves.
- Then the operating sections.Market, marketing, operations, team. Each has to be consistent with the model you just built, and writing them second means they will be.
- Then the funding request, if there is one, with sources and uses that total the same.
- Last, the executive summary.It summarizes a document that now exists. Written first, it summarizes a document you imagined.
Most weak plans are weak because they were written top to bottom, which means the summary and the market section were composed before anyone knew what the business could physically deliver.
The fields a template has to have
If the one you downloaded is missing any of these, add them.
Fields your template must have
- Unit of sale and price
- Direct cost per unit
- Capacity and its constraint
- Owner compensation
- Employment costs on top of wages
- Payment timing, in and out
- Assumptions list with sources
| Field | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|
| Unit of sale and price | Nothing can be modeled without it |
| Direct cost per unit | Sets the floor and the contribution |
| Capacity and its constraint | Caps the revenue line honestly |
| Owner compensation | Its absence makes the profit fictional |
| Employment costs on top of wages | Materially understated when left out |
| Payment timing, in and out | Where cash forecasts go wrong |
| Cash tied up in stock and work in progress | The hidden funding requirement |
| Assumptions list with sources | The page a reviewer actually interrogates |
| License and permit status | A common cause of delayed opening |
| Sensitivity on the two largest drivers | Shows the plan has been tested |
| Version and date | So the next reader knows what they have |
Here is a filled-in example for the 11 fields above, using a fictional mobile bike repair LLC. Figures are public rules or clearly labelled typical ranges.
| Field | Filled-in example | Source or rule |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of sale and price | One mobile bike repair visit at $95. | Typical range: $80 to $120 per visit. |
| Direct cost per unit | Parts and labor: $35 per visit. | Typical range: $25 to $45 per visit. |
| Capacity and its constraint | 6 visits per day. | Constrained by one technician and a 40-hour week. |
| Owner compensation | $60,000 per year. | Typical range: $50,000 to $80,000 per year. |
| Employment costs on top of wages | 22% on top of wages. | Typical range: 15% to 30% for payroll taxes and benefits. |
| Payment timing, in and out | Card: 2 business days. Invoice: net 30. Stripe: 2.9% plus $0.30 per online card charge. Square: 2.6% plus $0.10 in person. | Stripe and Square are named providers. Their published card rates apply. Net 30 is common for B2B invoices. |
| Cash tied up in stock and work in progress | 30 days of parts inventory. | Typical for a small repair business. |
| Assumptions list with sources | Price $95. 6 visits per day. 240 working days. | SBA plan guide. IRS standard mileage rate: 67 cents per mile for 2024. |
| License and permit status | State contractor license and local business license. | Check the state Secretary of State and city clerk. Fees vary. |
| Sensitivity on the two largest drivers | 10% drop in visits. 10% rise in parts cost. | Tests the two largest drivers. |
| Version and date | v1.0, 2025-01-15. | Put on cover and in file name. |
Remove the template's voice
Template prose has a recognizable sound: broad, hedged, and applicable to anything. Sentences that could describe any business describe none, and every one of them dilutes the sentences where you said something real.
Three passes to strip template voice
- Delete sentences true of any industry
- Cut adjectives with nothing behind them
- Research or remove unanswerable claims
The plan gets shorter. That is the intended effect. A reader's confidence goes up when the document is dense.
Fit the template to the reader
Before formatting anything, ask who reads it and what they require.
Fit the template to the reader
Who reads it and what do they require?
follow their required format or checklist
use the template order as written
A lender may have a required format or a submission checklist. A grant program may specify sections and page limits that override any template. An investor generally wants a deck first and the document as backup, which puts the weight on the summary section. An internal plan needs none of the introductory framing at all.
Ask, then build. Reformatting a finished plan into someone else's structure is a day of work that a single question at the start would have avoided.
Keep it a living document
Put a version number and a date on the cover and in the file name. Keep the version you submitted, unchanged, alongside the one you keep working on.
Conditions for revising the plan
- Change in what you sell or charge
- Lease or loan signed
- Key person joining or leaving
- License granted or refused
- Results departing from the model
Then set the conditions for revising it rather than a calendar reminder: a change in what you sell or what you charge, a lease or loan signed, a key person joining or leaving, a license granted or refused, or actual results departing meaningfully from the model.
Each of those makes part of the document wrong, and knowing which part is why you kept the assumptions in one place.
For the sections themselves and what belongs in each, work through the fundamentals overview; the template only tells you where they go.
Common questions
Is a paid template better than a free one?
Usually not for the written sections. Sometimes yes for the financial workbook, if it produces three properly linked statements and lets you see and edit the formulas. Test that before paying for anything.
How long should the finished document be?
However long the argument takes, with the evidence in appendices. Length is not the measure. A short plan a reviewer finishes beats a long one they skim.
Can I use a template from a different country?
The structure travels. The legal, tax and lending specifics do not. Replace every jurisdiction-dependent element with the requirement from the authority that actually applies to you.
Should I write it in a document or a spreadsheet?
Both. Prose in the document, every number in the spreadsheet, and the document referring to the spreadsheet rather than repeating figures. Numbers typed into prose stop matching the model the first time you revise it.
