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Cover all aspects of distribution, service provision, support, operations and/or manufacturing within this section. Depending on the nature and scale of your business, sub-sections could be used to handle key topics. This sections may need two-five pages.

Freeware Business Planner

	Free-Plan - 150-page Business Plan Guide & Template
	Requires: Word + Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP Price: Free
	Details & Download

Indicate the locations of the main premises and facilities. Describe plant/office/facilities and indicate sizes, capacities & utilization (past, present and future).

Review recent significant capital expenditure and outline future plans. Distinguish between mandatory and discretionary planned expenditure and summarize justifications (in terms of ROI, payback periods etc.) where appropriate. Include or append maps, charts, pictures etc.

Indicate the organization structure, human resources - headcounts, grades, skills, training etc.

Highlight major elements of manufacturing/operations/distribution. Use simple diagrams to illustrate processes or complex relationships.

Briefly describe systems for product costing, quality control, production management, maintenance, customer support etc. Use simple tables to summarize and place any important detail in an appendix.

If appropriate, specify unit costs for key inputs such as labor, payroll, power, communications, environmental services etc. and forecast how these might move in the future due to inflation, currency rates etc. Where relevant, forecast consumption/ utilization rates for key items and use these to project their total costs e.g. headcount multiplied by labor cost rate equals total labor cost.

Identify materials or goods to be purchased for either manufacturing or resale. For key items, indicate specifications, prices, taxes/duties, purchasing arrangements, inventory policies and credit terms. Discuss likely future price trends.

Explain transport/distribution arrangements and forecast the related costs.

For overheads, include detailed projections in an appendix and summarize them here.

Segment costs as variable, semi-variable and fixed. Indicate costings for key products/services and specify individual gross margins (see table below)*. Discuss breakeven points at corporate, operating unit and product levels.

Note: Free-Plan, a 150-page Word-based template based on this business plan guide, can be downloaded for free here.

Additional Help
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The Exl-Plan range of Excel-based financial planners can be used to generate detailed projections for costs, expenses, inventory and credit as part of the process of developing fully-integrated financial projections (income statements, cashflows, balance sheets etc.) for up to seven years ahead. All the charts and tables presented above were copied directly from output reports within Exl-Plan.

The more powerful versions of Exl-Plan can handle up to ten different revenue/cost streams and can generate separate projections of gross margin and working capital requirements for each stream.

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Plan Write Market Planner - Marketing Plan Writer	From US$ 119	Details	Demo
Quick Insight - Business Idea Assessor	From US$ 219	Details	Demo
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Note: All packages need Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP

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