This pop-up window will open automatically when you first load Business Plan Writer, uncheck the box to stop it displaying each time Business Plan Writer loads.  You can then access ‘Mini-Plan’ via the ‘Window’ menu. 

Once most people get down to starting their business plan they usually like to just ‘pile in’ – but we have found it pays dividends to spend a little time thinking at the early stages both to help clear your own thoughts and to communicate to others what the business plan will cover etc. 

The first thing to keep in mind is “know where you are” – there are so many parts to this tool that you need to make sure you don’t get lost and can get to where you want to go. 

You will probably do most of your navigating via two tool-strips or rows of buttons.  You will find these just under the menu bar, which is just under the title bar (the big blue bar at the top of the window in which Business Plan Writer is being displayed). 

The upper row of buttons allows you to move to the main areas of the software such as: ‘Words’, ‘Products’, ‘Overheads’, ‘Assets & More’, ‘Financial Reports’, ‘View Business Plan’

The lower row of buttons changes depending which of the main areas of the software you are in, and allows you to move to a sub-section – for instance, ‘Overheads’ has six sub-sections within it: ‘Premises’, ‘Transport’, ‘Marketing’, ‘Personnel’, ‘Miscelleneous’ and ‘Overheads Summary’. 

You can also use the menu bar (just under the title bar) to move around by using the ‘Window’ menu which has links to the same main areas of the software. 

Business Plan Writer is an all-in-one tool designed to help you create all the pieces you need to produce a credible business plan. 

Despite the number of available functions, which may seem too much at first sight, the tool has been designed around immediacy and speed for everyday work. 

Business Plan Writer is not for lovers of accounting or management theories, you won’t for example see any impenetrable collections of numbers which you need an MBA to understand.  The software does all it needs to do in order to produce full management accounts, but as much as possible this has been kept out of sight so you don’t have to worry about the sums. 

The interface of Business Plan Writer has been designed to match the requirements of most social entrepreneurs, as opposed to a more ‘open-bonnet’ approach that forces people down the road of ‘management-speak’ or having to focus on ‘debits and credits’ 

This means a change of mentality in people who are used to writing business plans from-scratch, but at the end of the day, it makes everything easier for everybody, not just for beginners. 

Business Plan Writer is a powerful tool for people who want to be free to think about what they’re doing, instead of getting bogged down in the process of writing their business plan. 

You will probably already have bits and pieces of text you can use in your business plan.  These could be from a variety of sources: committee minutes, project reports, funding applications, governing documents etc.

And whilst you could of course type in the bits you want in the to main text box in the ‘Words’ page of Business Plan Writer – an easier way of doing things (if you have an electronic copy of the source document) to to use copy and paste. 

1. Find your source document and locate the text you want to copy.
2. Highlight the text by dragging with your mouse or using ‘Shift’ and ‘Ctrl’ keys
3. Copy the selected text by either using the ‘Copy’ icon (if there is one) or by pressing the ‘Ctrl’ and ‘C’ keys together
4. Open your copy of Business Play Writer: Social Enterprise Version (if it is not open already)
5. Navigate to the ‘Words’ screen (if not open already)
6. Find the place in your business plan where you want to insert the text you copied in 3. above
7. Paste the text by either right-clicking the mouse and selecting ‘Paste or using the ‘Ctrl’ and ‘V’ keys together.

Once your text is pasted in, as soon as you move around in Business Plan Writer it will be saved – and you can of course edit it just like any other text in your business plan.

One last point, if when pasting it in the new text appears to have a different format to your other text, don’t worry, this will be changed to match the rest of your business plan automatically.