What goes in the executive summary?
Write it last and put it first. One page: what the business does, the opening in the market, who is running it, the headline numbers, and exactly how much you are asking for and what it buys. Most readers decide here whether to keep going, so the ask cannot sit on page nineteen. Be specific enough to be checked. "Opening a full sit-down cafe in a 1,400 square foot unit" beats "entering the coffee market": our coffee shop guide puts a full cafe at $80,000 to $350,000 to open, and a summary naming a figure inside that range tells an underwriter you have costed the thing rather than imagined it. State the amount, the term and the use of funds in a sentence each. Everything in the summary should reappear later in the document, in more detail and with exactly the same numbers.
What does the company description have to prove?
Legal structure, ownership split, location, trading history where there is any, and what makes the business defensible. For a loan, a visa or a license application this is also where eligibility is established, so it has to be exact: entity name, formation date, who owns what percentage. The part founders skip is the regulatory position, and it is often the part that decides the file. Our home health agency cost guide records that CMS closed Medicare enrollment to new home health agencies nationwide on 13 May 2026, and that California is not issuing new home health licenses at all. A plan that does not say which door it is walking through, or whether that door is currently open, gets sent back whatever the projections say. Write down the licenses you hold, the ones applied for, and the ones you still need.
How do you write a market analysis a lender will believe?
Size it twice, top down and bottom up, and put the source and the year next to every figure. Top down is the industry number: our laundromat guide puts US laundromat industry revenue at $6.8 billion in 2025 across roughly 29,500 sites. Bottom up is your own catchment: how many customers within a realistic drive, how often they buy, at what price. A plan carrying only the big number has not done the work. Then the competitors, named, with what they charge and where they are, rather than a paragraph asserting there is room for everyone. Underwriters ask about the businesses within a few miles of the site, and a national statistic is not an answer to that question. Where a figure genuinely does not exist, say so and show your build-up instead, the way our behavioral health cost guide does. Want it built for you? That is market research.
What does the organization and management section have to show?
Lenders underwrite the operator as much as the idea, so name the people, their titles, what they have done before, and what each one is paid. Then show the roles not yet filled and when they will be, because payroll is usually the largest line in the model and it has to reconcile with this section. Wages are checkable, so use real ones. Our med spa cost guide builds a one-injector, three-person med spa at $220,993 to $306,341 of first-year staffing and license cost, $259,232 in the middle case, from published federal wage data. A staffing table built that way survives questioning; a headcount asserted in a sentence does not. Where there are gaps in the team, write them down with the plan to close them. An underwriter who finds a gap you did not disclose stops trusting the rest of the document.
How should you describe your products, services and pricing?
What you sell, what it costs you to produce, what you charge, and why anyone pays it. Pricing and gross margin belong here and must tie to the same numbers in the model, because a margin asserted in the narrative and contradicted in the spreadsheet is the fastest way to lose a reader. Format matters as much as product: our bakery guide puts a home cottage bakery at $15,000 to $25,000 to start and a retail storefront at $75,000 to $300,000 or more. Those are two different businesses with two different plans, not one business at two sizes, so say which one you are writing. List the lines that carry the margin and the ones that only bring people through the door. If there is an edge in supply, location, brand or licensing, it goes here, with the evidence behind it.
What makes a marketing and sales section credible?
Not a line about posting on social media. Name the channels, what each costs, what it is expected to return and over what period, then total that into the marketing figure that appears in the model. Show the capacity math as well: a revenue line is a number of customers multiplied by a price, at a volume the business can physically serve. Our food truck guide puts average monthly revenue at $20,000 to $42,000 against $50,000 to $175,000 to launch, so a plan projecting past the top of that range has to explain what is different about it. Revenue that doubles with no extra staff, seats, machines or opening hours is the assumption an underwriter attacks first. If the sales cycle is long, say how long it is, and show what the business lives on in the meantime.
What belongs in the operations plan?
Premises, equipment, suppliers, hours, the staffing rota, and every license and permit you need in hand before the doors open, with the fee and the lead time beside each one. This is where the real cost of entry usually hides. Our adult day care cost guide builds a range of $85,000 to $832,000 and finds the state licensing fees it could verify run from $150 to under $4,000: the money is in the building, the occupancy classification and the working capital, not the paperwork. The same guide notes that an adult day health center may need a Group I-4 occupancy upgrade, which is a construction cost and a timetable rather than a line item. Write the timetable out, month by month, up to the point revenue starts. Where a regulator sits between you and opening, name it, name its fee, and say how long its review takes.
What do the financial projections have to contain?
Three statements that agree with each other: profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet, monthly through year one and annually to year five, on assumptions written down where the reader can find them. Show the debt-service-coverage ratio year by year at the rate and term your lender quoted. We model SBA plans to at least 1.25 unless the lender names a different floor, and every lender sets its own, so ask yours. Separate capital from working capital, because they are financed differently and confusing them is a common decline. Our dialysis center cost guide quotes a project North Carolina regulators approved in March 2026 at $2,948,634 of capital plus $795,549 of start-up and initial operating expense, $3,744,183 to reach opening day: the second figure is the one founders leave out. The free model in our starter kit links all three statements and carries a DSCR line.
How do you write the funding request and the appendix?
State the amount, the structure and the term, then give a use-of-funds table whose total equals the amount you are asking for, to the dollar. Where those two numbers differ, nothing else in the document gets read carefully. Show what you are putting in yourself and what security is available. The appendix then carries the evidence: resumes, the lease or letter of intent, equipment quotes, licenses, customer letters, franchise disclosures and the detailed financials. Quotes beat estimates. Our urgent care cost guide uses the franchisor's own published figures, a total initial investment of $1,227,774 to $1,778,851 for a new AFC franchised center including a $60,000 franchise fee, precisely because a published number can be checked and a consultant's assertion cannot. Every figure in the narrative should trace back to something in the appendix.
