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Template for Business Plan Success: Four Steps

Follow these four steps to be certain that your business plan will bring you closer to obtaining funding for your startup.

Hone Your Product or Service Concept

Before you even begin to write your plan, take a step back to make sure you have honed your product or service concept sufficiently. If you are still a bit uncertain of the details, do your best to zero in, but know that some details may be developed further as you learn more about the industry, customers, and competitors.

Research Deeply and Completely

Next, you must dig into research on the market opportunity for your concept. Analyze the market size is by estimating the dollars spent by potential customers in your target region on current competitors. Examine a number of the top existing competitors, going deeper than their websites will permit by personally trying their product or service whenever possible. Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of these competitors relative to your own planned product. Study the demographics of your specific customer target markets as well as their specific needs and buying behaviors.

Also study the expected startup and operating costs for the business. Study industry averages to get an overall sense and then research individual expenses one by one by phone, online, or through other means.

Run the Numbers

With the best information you have available, you must now create basic financial projections for the business, including reasonable expectations of revenues, costs, and profit for your first five years of operation. Use Microsoft Excel to produce these projections and make use of a financial template to shortcut the process significantly.

Write a Cautiously Optimistic Plan

Finally, draft the actual plan, using an established outline or template as a guide. Strike a cautiously optimistic tone, meaning that the plan must be generally positive about the business potential but also recognize that very few startups succeed fabulously overnight. The plan should be formal and never appear to oversell the idea with hyperbolic statements (such as “competitors will not stand a chance…” or “the management team is guaranteed to succeed”). Recognize that the funders who will read your plan are aware of business realities and your plan must remain a rational proposal.

About the Author

Eric Powers is associated with Growthink, a business plan consulting firm. Since 1999, Growthink business plan writers have developed more than 2,000 business plans. Call 800-506-5728 today for a free consultation. If you're writing your own business plan, you can access a proven template, here: http://www.growthink.com/products/business-plan-template.

Does anyone know of a household bill record or template?

I have been using Excel but i want to show all the bills paid in a financial year and have a statement of all money paid to a certain company. I have looked on Microsoft Access templates but it is all Business. I know this seems kinda nerdy but any idea's would help.
Thanks

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Microsoft Statement Templates
Sobolsoft com How To Use Excel Billing Statement Template Software

Crystal Reports Designing Customer Statement Notes for Programmer

Most of the accounting packages have customer statement version available out of the box. There are reasons for you to decide recreate the statement in flexible design tool. For example you may want to place customer specific disclaimer, user defined fields. There are also the cases where you have custom client relation system where reporting is not implemented and open for generic tools, such as MS Access Forms, Crystal, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). There might be situations where you are selling telecommunication time in minutes and this time doesn't go into your accounting system directly and should be pulled from external database often via web service or web http request. Let's review the steps and recommendations:

1. Separate the report itself from SQL data pulling engine. Obviously most of the reporting tools have direct data linking options and even wizards to build such relation. However these options are reasonably limited and good for education purposes but not really for professional developer. We've seen numerous failures where wizard did its job but the report produced duplicate rows and inaccurate summaries. Layout looked nice and graphical elements were professionally created however customer could not trust such a report. How do we separate layout from SQL data pulling?

2. Base it on SQL View or Stored Procedure. First you work in MS SQL Server Management Studio Query designer and test the SQL Select statement. You may use such complex constructions here as Union. When select statement is tuned to produce reliable results you envelop it with SQL View. In some cases you have to use SQL Cursor or create temporary tables and here you are appealing to Stored Procedure. Its parameters are automatically translated to report parameters. Test results set first and do not design report until you are satisfied with its quality. That way eliminates the need to redesign report layout from scratch in the future. And even in the case when you face some inaccuracy or business logic change request down the road – you may just make a change in the View or Stored Procedure and the fix should work without any layout design change

3. Graphical design. As you can deploy various picture formats including popular JPEG, BMP, GIF we recommend you to do professional graphics in Adobe Photoshop. If you are thinking about new logotype we recommend you to read whitepapers about vector graphic formats and Adobe Illustrator. Your logo often needs to be scaled up and down and it is possible if you switch from bit map to vector graphic

4. Connection to custom database via ODBC DSN. You can combine the data from cross-platform databases in such constructions as SQL Open Row Set or Linked Server. Such databases as Oracle, MySQL/PHP, MS Access, Excel, CSV or tab delimited text files, XML, Pervasive SQL and its predecessor Btrieve, Ctree/Faircom

5. I'd like to compare several design tools. Could you recommend me a list? Yes, direct competition includes SSRS (Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services). Here you are working with web exposed instrument in Microsoft Visual Studio. The recommendations on SSRS are similar. Consider SQL View or Stored Procedure as the base and test it prior to beginning layout design. If you are comfortable with Microsoft Access you can design the lay out there and then link it via ODBC to the database. Excel is obviously powerful if you are comfortable with connecting it to the database tables. If you are thinking about specific Corporate ERP application such as Microsoft Dynamics ERP it is a trend to open the way to Word Templates and SSRS. Such platforms as Great Plains Dynamics, Solomon, Small Business Financials are open for Crystal due to the fact that they are hosted either in MS SQL Server or Pervasive SQL 2000/Btrieve (only old versions such as 7.5 and older)

6. Crystal and SAP Business One. In version 8.8X SAP B1 is encouraging you to deploy Crystal Reports and there is no longer need to install special add-on

7. Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL 2000 and Great Plains DOS 9.5. It is possible to connect to these databases via ODBC 32 bit System DSN. The fact that we are now in 64 bit computing era introduces some near future risks

8. Do we have to find local programmer or there is the way to implement the project remotely? Both ways have their pluses and minuses. Local consultant is ready to show up at your office as you call her or him and schedule the meeting. At the same time the potential disadvantage might be the business model where local programmer has to be really diversified to serve maximum number of local and regional customers and this diversification might lead to limited experience in your specific project. Remote support is coming close in its technology advance with the introduction of web sessions and phone conferences (Skype, Gotomeeting, WebEx, GotomyPC). Serving clients nationwide allows the consulting firm to concentrate on the projects where local market would not provide enough business
About the Author

Andrew Karasev is Great Plains Certified Master, MVP, [email protected] 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904. He is also the initiator of eFaru project http://www.efaru.com and founder of Alba Spectrum information space. Local service is available in Chicago metro from Naperville and Villa Park locations. By the nature of our service we are available USA and Canada nationwide via web sessions and phone and Skype conferences

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Microsoft Statement Templates