The short answer: the kit is four files: a nine-section business plan template in Word, the same five-year financial model in two currencies, and a one-page guide telling you which order to use them in. It is free, it is generic on purpose, and the numbers already in the model are examples for you to overwrite.
What is in the Business Plan Template?
The Word file runs to nine numbered sections: summary of the document, company overview, industry analysis, consumer analysis, competitor analysis, marketing strategy, operations plan, management team with the funding request, and an appendix. Each section opens with instructions in red italics telling you what belongs there, and each one is written to be deleted as you replace it. Placeholders are written as [Company], so a single find and replace renames the whole document. There is a confidentiality page at the front and a contents page that updates itself. It is deliberately generic: what it gives you is the order a lender or an investor reads in, not industry copy you would have to unpick first. The long-form walkthrough of that same structure is our guide to writing a business plan.
What does the financial model include?
Both workbooks are the same five-year model, one in dollars and one in pounds. Eight sheets: Inputs, Sales Forecast, Income Statement, Cash Flow, Balance Sheet, Loan Amortization, Ratios and Breakeven. You type into the Inputs sheet and nowhere else: start-up costs split between fixed assets and one-off expenses, equity and loan with an interest rate and a term, up to three revenue streams with units, price, monthly growth and a cost-of-sales percentage, seven operating expense lines, payroll, the tax rate, the depreciation period, and receivable and payable days. Everything after that is formulas. The sales forecast runs month by month through year one and then annually to year five. The Ratios sheet shows gross margin, net margin, EBITDA margin, DSCR and the current ratio, and the balance sheet carries a check row that has to read zero in every year. If you want the numbers built for you instead, that is our financial model service.
What is in the Start Here guide?
One page. It lists the four files, then sets the order to work in: fill in the Inputs sheet first, read the Ratios and Breakeven sheets to see whether the business you have just described actually works, then write the plan in the Word template using the numbers the model produced, then check that the two agree with each other before anybody else reads them. Payroll in the model should match the staffing you wrote about; the funding request should match the use of funds. It closes on the number a bank reader looks at first, the debt-service-coverage ratio on the Ratios sheet, which is EBITDA divided by that year's loan principal and interest. Every lender sets its own floor, so ask yours what it is: we model SBA plans to at least 1.25 unless the lender names a different figure.
Who is the kit for, and what it will not do
It is for founders writing the plan themselves: a first raise, a bank or SBA application, a visa filing your attorney has already scoped, or an internal go or no-go decision. It is a starting point rather than a finished document. It will not research your market, tell you whether your assumptions are plausible, or tell you what your particular lender wants to see. The figures sitting in the model are examples, put there so every sheet calculates the moment you open it, and replacing them is the first thing to do. If you would rather not write it yourself, we build it with you: business plans start at $1,000 and every price we charge is published.
