I’ve created a minimum business plan file that you can use as a starting point with Business Plan Pro so that you have an easier and quicker way to work through what I’m calling the minimum business plan for this class.

Step-by-step

1. You can use this link to purchase Business Plan Pro direct from Palo Alto Software. Or call the tollfree number at (800) 229-7526, or the local number at 541-683-6162, and ask for sales. Tell the salesperson you are using this for a class, and need academic pricing. There is no Macintosh version, but I use it on my Mac all the time, in Parallels.
2. Install Business Plan Pro. Notice the video tutorials, and the extensive help, and the technical support available for free by email or telephone. Please don’t ask me to do tech support for the software.
3. You can use this link to get the file. It’s also on the downloads page on this site. How you actually download depends on which browser you use. For example, in Internet Explorer you right-click the mouse and use the "save target as" option to download a file. Get the file downloaded and saved on yur disk.
4. Open this minimum business plan file from within Business Plan Pro.
5. VERY IMPORTANT: use the Save-As command to save the file with a different name. You don’t want to work with the original, because then you can never start over; and you’ll run the risk of having a classmate using the same name.
6. VERY IMPORTANT: Don’t use the tasks view to go step-by-step. Use the outline view, not the tasks view, to show your files.
7. VERY IMPORTANT: Use the plan setup to make sure you’re set for the standard plan: not the simple, and not the more detailed. If you don’t, then the wrong outline points show up.

Here’s what you should be looking at … maybe not exactly, depending on where you are, but it should look something like this, with instructions showing on the upper left, an action window in the lower left (for text or tables), and the outline in the right (you an click on the picture for a larger view).

These instructions are about doing the business plan yourself without the aid of Business Plan Pro. If you have Business Plan Pro available to you and you choose to use it, then you won’t need this. You will need to have some sort of spreadsheet, or a calculator.

You can’t get around basic spreadsheet usage. If you don’t know how to start, set up a new spreadsheet (also called workbook, or worksheet), to select rows or columns and name them, and type in formulas, then you need to find out. This link may help. Also this one. And this may be an indication that you do want to get access to Business Plan Pro, because if you have that, you won’t need spreadsheet prior knowledge.

1. Start with a blank spreadsheet. How you do that depends on which spreadsheet you’re using. 
2. Set it up as shown in the illustration here, although don’t worry about the formats, like white text on a black background or the colors of the cells.
3. Set up five years in a row along the top, naming them either with the actual name of the year (”2010″ or whatever) or as numbered years “Year 1   Year 2″ etc. 
4. Set up the title row like it’s shown here, the row with the label “Potential Customers” in cell A3, “Growth” in cell B3, and CAGR in cell H3. CAGR, by the way, stands for “compound annual growth rate.

(Click the picture for a larger view)

5. Set up one row each for each market segment. The example here shows three segments. You set up as many as you need.
6. Use column B in each of the segment rows to set up a cell to contain each segment’s estimated annual growth rate as a percentage. That’s a number.
7. Use column C in each of the segment rows to set up the initial estimated potential market number for that segment. It’s a number. You type that number in.
8. Set up the following formula in cell H4: “=IF(C4<>0,(G4/C4)^(1/4)-1,0″ … don’t worry if you see an error message, it will solve itself; it’s missing numbers.
9. In cell D4, set up this formula: “=ROUND(C4*(1+$B4),0″
10. Copy cell D4 and paste it into Cells E4:G4.
11. Repeat steps 7-11 for each market segment row, but of course adjusting the row numbers in the formulas, so that, for example, in row 5 the formula in step 9 refers to C5 and G5, and the formula in step 10 refers to C5 and $B5. In row 6, C6, G6, and $B6. And so on. 
12. Set up the final summary row. Put “Total” in that row’s column A. For it’s column H, type in (or copy from another row and paste) the same formula you see in number 8, above. In this example, in which the totals are in row 7, it would be: “=IF(C7<>0,(G7/C7)^(1/4)-1,0″. In column B, type in the formula: “=H7″.
13. When you have your table as shown here completed, refer to your spreadsheet documentation (details vary) to create a market pie chart to illustrate the cells in the first year column. In this example, it would be the following:
14. For the text parts of this assignment, you can refer back to the assignment page and follow the suggested outline. Use your word processor and spreadsheet facilities to copy the table and the chart into the document, and then to print it out onto an Adobe Acrobat PDF document.

This interview is a couple of years old now, but I thought it was a pretty good summary of business planning as applied to real-world companies. It was done on the floor of a trade show of eBay vendors.