Business PlanPro 2003

by Business PlanPro 2003

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• ASIN: B00006CFAV
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 29, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,422 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #14 in Software > Business & Office > Reports & Forms
  • #17 in Software > Business & Office > Business Plans
  • #35 in Software > Business & Office > Presentation

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Business Plan Pro 2003 includes more than 400 sample plans and is an easy, fast, and efficient way to create a winning business plan. Great for both novice and expert entrepreneurs, the software includes a plan wizard, automated spreadsheets, hundreds of financing leads, $300 in partner discounts, and much more.

Business Plan Pro includes thousands of industry profiles to help you run your business's financial numbers. You can also include your own graphics, and automatically develop full-color, 3-D charts. Import data from QuickBooks, and Microsoft Word and Excel. Business Plan Pro 2003 offers everything you need to define your business, compare industry ratios, set schedules, create personnel and mini marketing plans, and find funding.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Customer support is in denial that product is flawed..., October 7, 2002

By 

S. D. Favis (Sacramento) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Business PlanPro 2003 (CD-ROM)

There are too many non-intuitive things about this software program. You are better off creating a template in Word, and using excel for forecasting, especially if you offer more than 5 products in services-since you are going to have to export them to excel anyway.

Sales forecasting does not take into consideration real world data such as maximum output, or a high low analysis, so you are literally pulling numbers out of your .... Not only that but if you spend 45 minutes tweaking your chart, and you don't have sales in the first month, and you hit the project buttion, it resets itself...sorry there is no 'undo' button, you have to cancel and start again.

Chart displays are [messed] up if you have more than a couple of products and services, even though there are custom formatting properties, they are designed with the premise that you have knowledge and a whole vocablulary full of chart words, and terms, and descriptions, otherwise yo have guess the format that works best, then hit 'apply'. Note that there are hundreds of possible settings.

I am no idiot when comes to software programs since I myself have developed programs, and have been developing them for years. Although to the Palo Alto software support, this one will be classified as a "user error", rather than a features suggestion.

The program lockups up in xp pro and ... of course they blame this on microsoft.

With the elimination of any 'feature suggestions' from customers and blaming the flawed product design on the user, Palo Alto software offers no room for improving their Business Plan Pro Software...what a pity.

Start your Business plan using Word, and Excel. Then just get a book of business formula's and business plan layouts, both books are less than Busines Plan Pro 2003. You will have a lot more control over what your charts look like, you'll have more control over how accurate your sales forecasting is, and more control over what your text displays, a lot more features, and reliability.
At first business planning seems like an overwhelming taks, and one might think that you can go through the plan easier with this software, and this may seem true at first, but to do accurate sales forecasting you have to actually go out of the business plan (which defeats the purpose of it in the first place) and use a normal spreadsheet like excel, or quattro pro.

I would not have written this software review if Palo Alto Software would not have pointed all the software flaws at me, and just admitted their software has bugs and flaws.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for beginners and simple, direct business plans, March 7, 2003

By 

Pamela A Henderek (Estes Park, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Business PlanPro 2003 (CD-ROM)

As a first timer - new to biz plans - I found it an immense help, especially with the financial wizards. I was rushing on a deadline, and since my plan was relatively simple for a small business, this software helped me set it up and prepare the financial statements in a fraction of the time than if I had to do from scratch.

I would advise anyone trying it, to first just go through it quickly by typing simple answers in each section, and then review how it prints out. This way you can see how the final report is organized, and you can go back and edit. You will also avoid repetition by doing this first. I spent more time than they estimated, but if I had done the above, I would have completed it even faster.

All the charts and graphs are optional. What I liked is that they provided the ideas and information that I needed to begin, and then I could create my own and insert them where I wanted. The table evaluations were fantastic for me because they indicated where I stand finanicially, and gave me feedback on the areas that I had to work on and develop better.

I couldn't readily format it the way I wanted to cut down on the number of pages and spaces, and I didn't have the time to try to learn that with the software, so I exported it to Word, where I know how to format. Being able to export it into Word was a huge help. I was delighted to see that the Table of Contents kept its functions when I exported it to Word, so even though I changed pages, the table adjusted itself.

Bottom line, it saved me time, helped me understand what needed to be included, helped communicate it in a way that anyone can read (not overly technical), and best of all, set up and calculated all those financial statements for me.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worked Perfectly on XP for me, January 8, 2003

By 

John Umali (Kirkland, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Business PlanPro 2003 (CD-ROM)

I've had some various problems with software products on XP before, so with every new product I buy I like to check it out thoroughly. Business Plan Pro passed my initial tests with flying colors, and I've since written two different complex business plans without a single problem.

The best thing about Business Plan Pro for me is the financials. I was a business minor in college, so I have some business accounting background, but the financial help and pre-defined tables in Business Plan Pro blew me away. What would've taken me days only took me an hour or two. Talk about saving time! And for me, time is money. I highly recommend this product to XP users, and anyone else looking to write their business plan.