One of the main reasons business owners and entrepreneurs use business plan software is to simplify building their financial models. Even with an explosion in business plan software packages on the market today, "doing the financial projections" is still often cited as the most difficult part of completing a business plan. Yet, software can still simplify financial forecasting.
The question is: Which software?
Ultimate Business Planner has been touted as a dynamic, interactive planning tool that takes the drudgery out of complex, time-consuming financial forecasting and business planning. It combines easy-to-use software functions with a step-by-step approach to create a business plan.
It is designed for those individuals or businesses in need of getting a business plan done fast. The Ultimate Business Planner prides itself on being the fastest and easiest way to write a winning business plan.
Atlas Business Solutions, Inc. (ABS), developer of the business planning technology in QuickBooks? Premier 2005 and the maker of Ultimate Business Planner, is a well-respected and established business software development company. Their products are top rated and are priced moderately.
So, let's check it out?
Step-by-step approach with five manageable sections
The Ultimate Business Planner breaks the business planning process into five manageable sections: Company, Income, Expenses, Interview and Plan.
The first four sections gather information to prepare and complete your financial forecast. Interactive dialogs with plain-English instructions, questions and fill-in the blanks capture information and build your company profile. Income and expense worksheets enable you to define income and expense categories and project monthly amounts with easy to use forecasting functions.
There are three methods you can use to enter your monthly income or expense data: manually or cell-by-cell, automatically - using a combination of the worksheet functions to project amounts for you based on your assumptions, or importing/copy paste - take data from your files if you are using QuickBooks Pro/Premier/Enterprise 2003 (or later) or simply copying and pasting data from an MS Excel worksheet.
The fifth section provides several tools to write a business plan including: a business plan outline to guide you step-by-step in writing your business plan, topic guides and example tabs that explain what you should include in each topic with examples of each, and a powerful, easy to use text editor for entering and editing your text.
Includes help functions, advice and how-to hints to
overcome most business plan obstacles
The package includes many help functions for advice and how-to hints to overcome the many obstacles to writing a successful business plan. For example, refer to the twenty-five industry-specific sample business plans for suggested wording, or to copy-and-paste select phrases or sections directly into your business plan to breakthrough writers block quickly. Or, there are many financial wizards available to calculate loan amounts, interest rates, monthly payments, depreciation, amortization and more.
Complete the sections and
Ultimate Business Planner does the rest
With Ultimate Business Plan, you are free to complete each section in the order you choose. Then, when the sections are complete the Ultimate Business Planner does the rest. It evaluates the financial viability of your business ideas or strategies quickly and easily; creates complete financial statement projections (for up to 36 months) to show to your bankers or other potential investors; and, produces a professional report in ever respect including graphs to highlight the potential of your business plan.
Change scenarios for
intelligent, informed decisions
Changing scenarios is easy with the Ultimate Business Planner. For example, to quickly see how hiring more employees or adding a new product affects your bottom line simply go to period and change the amount. The software will automatically update all the related financial statements, charts and tables. In short, the Ultimate Business Planner allows you to see how your bottom line is affected by unlimited business situations.
What's missing?
Three things I wish the Ultimate Business Planner would do. First, allow users the option to enter historical financial data (an important option if you are an established business). Second, either extend or allow users the option to extend the forecast period to five years (a common time horizon for venture capitalist and equity sponsors). Third, allow users to vary gross margin assumptions on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis (in version 3.0 material, labor and overhead assumptions remain fixed throughout the entire three-year forecast period).
But don't let these things hold you back from trying the Ultimate Business Planner. You can easily work around them and the time and ease of use in other areas more than offsets these shortcomings.
For example, to include historical financial data, you can export your projections to Excel and then add the needed history directly into MS Excel?. If you want a five-year projection, simply create a new file that begins with the ending balances forecasted in your original three-year plan and do the addition two-year projection in the new file. Then, you can merge the original three-year plan with the extended plan using MS Excel?. If you want to vary the gross margin assumptions over the forecast period, you can create separate product categories for the same product and vary the material, labor and overhead as a percentage of sales for each product category and related period.
Go to the demo?
All direct purchases of the Ultimate Business Planner from ABS are backed by their 90-day unconditional, money-back guarantee (excluding upgrades which are nonrefundable). To help you evaluate whether the Ultimate Business Planner is right for you, Business Plan Secrets Revealed has prepared a section-by-section demonstration that can be viewed at http://www.business-plan-secrets-revealed.com/business-plan-software.ht ml
The Ultimate Business Planner is a pretty simple business planning software to use. It's a quick and useful business planner that produces a well-written and organized business plan. At $99.00, it's worth giving it a shot.
Mike Elia is a chief financial officer and an advisor to venture capitalists and leverage buyout specialists. His business plan ebook http://www.business-plan-secrets-revealed.com/business-plan-software.ht ml shows how to make your business the most appealing investment choice to venture capitalists, bankers, and other business investors. For his free business plan guide http://www.business-plan-secrets-revealed.com/business-plan-software.ht ml
Bradley bmw rental chicago .. Lockport Chicago limo O’HareIt is a well known fact that Java as a... Read More
How many steps does it take you to locate and... Read More
There is many things more frustrating than surfing a website... Read More
I have always had a tendency to focus on the... Read More
There are many commands that are used in linux on... Read More
Microsoft Office program is a programming tool called Visual Basic... Read More
Microsoft CRM is CRM application, maintained and supported by Microsoft... Read More
Microsoft Great Plains is main Microsoft Business Solutions product, targeted... Read More
Research bears that less than 70 percent of development projects... Read More
Microsoft CRM was designed to be easily customizable. Microsoft CRM... Read More
A LOT OF UNWANTED FILES.When you uninstall an item of... Read More
So, you've bought a new Macintosh, and now you may... Read More
Document Manager and Version HistoryIn previous articles I have discussed... Read More
When it comes to screenplay software each screenwriter needs to... Read More
It???s easy to understand why you might be drawn to... Read More
Fleet Maintenance Management is a critical position in any company... Read More
IntroductionDuring the early years of our modern computer era, very... Read More
Have you noticed WordPerfect is gearing up for a comeback... Read More
Beginning with Domino version R4 it has integration with the... Read More
Microsoft PowerPoint has dramatically changed the way in which academic... Read More
As we could imagine, if you are reading this article... Read More
This is the tutorial where we really get into programming.... Read More
It is really interesting that a bug can create problem... Read More
Make-or-Break Factors in Success and ProfitabilityFor quick printers, estimating can... Read More
MSN messenger is a pretty cool invention. I mean I'm... Read More
prom limo McHenry ..Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is very good fit for... Read More
While paper labeling CDs and DVDs may appear to be... Read More
Microsoft Great Plains as ERP and Microsoft CRM as... Read More
Most people understand that the "hardware" part of their computer... Read More
Today's business world is fast-paced. No matter what it is... Read More
The Microsoft system preparation utility for Windows 2000 is a... Read More
Software development is a risky business.Many software developers are barely... Read More
In our opinion, traditional approach when you select ERP/MRP system... Read More
Almost all new and major brand of PCs come with... Read More
Fundraising software lets you connect with donors in a way... Read More
Traditionally we were considering functionally rich systems, such as SAP,... Read More
New post-recession era has new features, which didn't exist in... Read More
Whether you are an experienced web programmer or a complete... Read More
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has substantial market share and... Read More
Small can be beautiful! Working with Knoppix for the past... Read More
Once a business idea is selected, it is highly recommended... Read More
In the previous ISDN article, we looked at how and... Read More
Let us give you - developer some hints in the... Read More
GroupwareEfforts are continually made to manage the unavoidable ad hoc... Read More
... Read More
Music downloads are off the charts! We're listening to digital... Read More
Program Flow is what you think it is. How the... Read More
The purpose of one of our projects was MS Exchange... Read More
Formatting and reinstalling windows 98 is very easy if you... Read More
Microsoft Office program is a programming tool called Visual Basic... Read More
Software |