FAQ: Business Planning Software
Past readers have applauded the features of Business Plan Pro from Palo Alto Software. In partnership with PAS, the Social Enterprise Alliance has recently produced a customized version of this software designed for enterprising nonprofits. Business Plan ProŽ Social Enterprise Edition incorporates additional features for earned income ventures, including a new section on Social Return on Investment. For more information, go to: http://www.se-alliance.org/resources_bpp_se.cfm. Rolfe Larson & Andy Horsnell
We've recently developed a new three-year business plan and found that a simple software package called Business Pro from Palo Alta Software was very helpful. It provides a general template for business planning and
will walk you through it step-by-step. You can set the template to fit a non-profit model.
www.paloalto.com. (Posted by Jeff
Galley on December 25, 2002)
I second this software. It not only will help you with your business plan, it will also help you with cash flow projections and budget to
actuals. It's $99 bucks and I can't stop raving about this software to other EDs
and small business owners. (Posted January 2, 2003 by Donna Milgram)
I think it's relevant to any kind of business and what's most amazing about the software is that it's very user friendly, it links half a dozen tables together so if you make a change for example in actuals, it changes the cash flow and uses the actuals as your new base #s (not your former projected). It also doesn't assume knowledge of business planning, it walks you through step by step. The author also wrote an excellent business planning book that accompanies the software and is an explanation of it really. I wish I'd come across this software years ago.
I no longer need a bookkeeper to do budgeting for our organization. Now I only need to pull numbers from our accounting software and feed it into business pro software to get budget variance, cash flow projections, personnel plan, revised budget, etc. Also, the software keeps a table of your assumptions which you can change. So those of your worried about the software's assumptions, they are up front.
Finally, I haven't had a chance to use this yet, but the software even has a marketing plan section and it provides free examples of many different types of business plans by industry, type of product. In fact, for everything it asks you to do, it provides an explanation and an example. I'm a contextual learner so for me this is fabulous.
Like many of you, I don't bring a business background to the table. With Business Pro Software, I don't need one, it knows the right questions to ask me to help me come up with a plan and I don't have to have great excel skills (mine are mediocre) or have a staff member with these skills. (Posted January 3 by Donna Milgram)