Atlanta CPA Teaches Business Plan Writing

If you have ever considered or even dreamed of going into business for yourself, you’ve already engaged in some degree of business planning. Most likely your planning was intertwined with your thoughts about the personal issues that accompany a decision to start your own business.

In its most general sense, business planning is all about taking your dream and turning it into reality. A business plan is the document you create when you take an idea for a commercial endeavor and work through all the factors that will have an impact on the successful startup, operation, and management of the business.

Why Write a Business Plan?

Smart entrepreneurs plan, not because accountants or business advisors tell them to, but because they understand that it increases their chances for success. Sure, there are successful companies whose owners fly by the seat of their pants and never get around to writing a business plan. But they succeeded despite the lack of a formal plan, not because of it. How much better might they have done had their good ideas been coupled with some strategic planning?

Those who have decided to embark on a new enterprise have probably already taken some steps, however informal, to confirm the viability of the new business. Writing a business plan is the next logical step in that process. For example, a business plan can be the vehicle that carries your new idea from the conceptual and planning phase down the road to the building and operational phases. Or, it may help to establish your business’s credentials for purposes of obtaining bank financing or investment by future partners.

A plan for an existing business may just deal with a single aspect of your business, such as a new product introduction and its impact on financial management and other ongoing operational issues. On this and the following pages, we’ll address your key questions about business plans, including:

  • Why go to the trouble of documenting what you know will work? What events trigger the need to create or update a plan?
  • To put the plan together: do you know who your audience is? How will you gather all the information that you need? What should the plan look like?
  • How will you organize and present your plan? What documents will you include, and what will each provide to a reader?
  • How do real world results compare to the plan? What do you do when things go wrong or the unexpected occurs?

The body of the business plan can be divided into four distinct sections:

  1. The Description of the Business
  2. The Marketing Plan
  3. The Financial Management Plan
  4. The Management Plan

Addenda to the business plan should include the executive summary, supporting documents and financial projections.

For an outline of the material that should be in your plan, see Writing a Business Plan. It describes the layout and detailed items you should include.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Ephesians 5: 25:27

We have worked with many small businesses in Atlanta and North Georgia to develop strategic business plans. We would be happy to sit down with you and discuss your business planning needs. Please feel free to call or contact us.