Writing your plan Follow

The Plan section in LivePlan is where you’ll write, edit and refine your business plan. When you create your company, the plan will be set up with an outline that includes chapters, sections, and topics, which are a foundational base of almost any business plan. Along with tables and charts that are populated with your forecast data.

The default plan outline is intentionally simple and lightweight to make writing your plan more approachable. If you’re not sure where to start, the Executive Summary contains topics for summarizing each of the main sections in the plan and can be a good place to pin down the content that will go into the larger chapters.

• What's included in the default outline

You can start writing your plan in the provided outline, or you can customize the outline to meet the needs of your unique business. Customizing the outline can be done on the Outline page of the Plan section. Just click and drag any chapter, section, or topic to add them to your plan or to rearrange the plan’s outline. To change the titles in your plan outline, click the grey pencil icon to the right of the title.

• Changing the organization of your plan outline
• Changing the title of a chapter, section, or item

If you’re unsure how to customize your outline, don’t worry too much about it. Just start with the sections in the default outline. Customizations can be added at any time.

• Using the LivePlan template
• Adding and editing plan charts
• Adding and editing plan tables

To start writing, go to the topic that you would like to work in and click Start topic. This will open the text editor and allow you to begin working in the topic.

• Writing and editing text topics

On the right side of the text editor, you’ll see some instructions and examples for the topic you’re working on. These will help guide you as you go through the writing process. If examples that are closer to your intended business plan would be helpful, our sample plan library can be found in the LivePlan Learning menu. 

• Using the instructions and examples to help write your plan
• Accessing the Sample Plan Library

If you’re working on a business plan for a nonprofit organization we offer an outline formatted for nonprofits. This outline redefines many of the default outline’s sections to better fit nonprofit planning and adds customized instructions.

• Creating a plan for a nonprofit organization

Once you’ve finished crafting your plan it can be exported by clicking on the grey printer icon in the right corner of the Plan page.

• Downloading and printing your plan

To see the Plan section in action, visit our Getting Started Videos page.