How to write a Business plan ?

I had to do this last year! You can get blank business plans via a google search. Just pick out the pieces that relate to your business and you will be sorted, they should have headings on, which will give you an idea of what you need to write in that section.

Business plan needs to be multi-year - 5 years is usually fine Split it into revenues and expenses. On the revenue side you need to identify the following: - product - sales price - no of units you think you can sell - cost of either producing the item or acquiring it. This will give you your gross margin On the expense side you will need to identify: - employee costs - easiest way to do this is take number of people at average salary and social costs. If you want to get more complex then no of people at various levels at different salaries will do it. - marketing costs - how much you will spend on advertising and promotion for your product including travel, ad space, promotional materials - office costs - rent, stationary, communications (mobiles, faxes etc). There are also items that will be considered capital expenditure - this would include but not be limited to office furniture, vehicles and IT equipment. You will be allowed to depreciate this against profit over say 5 years. Thus if you spend £1,000 in year one you will be able to depreciate £200 in year one and each of the following 4 years. This will become important as I will explain below. On profit you need to apply corporation tax. If you are assuming sales growth of say 10% per year you also need to consider what else will grow (eg employee costs) The one thing that kills new business is lack of cash flow so most business plans will have both a profit and loss statement and cash flow. The difference is that the cash flow statement will merely show what cash moves in and out of the company. Non-cash items such as capital expenditure and depreciation have to be added in or removed. This is a pretty simplistic analysis but should be adequate for your project -

So much has been written on producing proper business plans, the libraries have multiple volumes on it. Go to the library and do your homework. There is no such thing as "one-paragraph instructions." Too much has to go into a proper biz plan. You probably can get enough info for a high school homework assignment in an hour or two of research. Of course, that's not enough to actually write a proper biz plan.

- Register for an online business plan software, for example: iplanner.net, it's completely free - There is a standard outline waiting for you; tap in some basic stuff about the idea, customers, competitors etc - Tap in some basic financials (a revenue forecast, costs) - Publish and share your plan

Have a look at the businesslink.gov website - they have a template that you can run off and fill in your business details. Pretty straightforward.

product cost price ie what you buy it for cost of product to sell where to sell promotion costs expected sales expected profits after tax, costs etc