LivePlan is the only app with available world-class industry benchmark data provided by ProfitCents (from Abrigo, formerly known as Sageworks). This gives you the power to compare your key business metrics to other similar companies across the United States.
This feature is available to LivePlan Premium users. To learn more about LivePlan Premium, please click here.
Abrigo owns a proprietary database of privately-held company financial statements aggregated by industry. Abrigo collects approximately 1,000 of these financial statements daily from accounting firms, banks, and credit unions through a cooperative agreement with their clients. They separate the financial data from any information identifying the participating firms. Then they aggregate the data by industry according to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The finished database includes more than 1,400 industries.
NAICS codes and descriptions
Benchmark search results are based on the industry codes and descriptions established by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). ProfitCents data is categorized according to NAICS because it is the standard used by Federal statistical agencies (like the U.S. Census Bureau) to classify businesses to collect, analyze, and publish data about the U.S. business economy.
NAICS was developed jointly by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to allow for a high level of comparability in business statistics among North American countries.
NAICS category titles aren't very intuitive
NAICS codes and descriptions are updated every five years. Despite these updates, many NAICS industry titles still contain somewhat outdated terminology. For example, if you are writing a business plan for a coffee shop, and you search for "coffee shop," NAICS will return a category called "Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars." This is the correct category for a coffee shop business, but it might not seem intuitive based on the title.
Likewise, If you search for "web design," NAICS will return a category called "Custom Computer Programming Services." It's important to read the full description for a category so you can make an accurate selection.
We have added more current terminology as keywords for LivePlan's custom search algorithm to make it easier to locate the correct NAICS category for your business. But if you have any difficulty finding a category that seems right for your business, please , and we'll be happy to help you.
How to use the benchmarks if you are outside of the U.S.
The industry data from our partners at Abrigo comes from U.S. companies only. While we continue to search for sources of international benchmark data, we haven't yet found any sources that contain large enough data sets to be of use to our customers.
If you are in another country, the data in the Benchmarks tab may still be useful, but you probably want to select the entire U.S., rather than a specific region, as your point of comparison to your forecast.
For more on using the Benchmarks, see these articles:
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