Choosing a start date in plan creation



It's only the second question in the plan creation form but you might be wondering when is best to start planning your business from. It's largely up to you but here is some advice targeted towards both startups and existing businesses. 



For a startup

There are two main plans you want to make as a startup. An operating plan and a ramp up plan.


The operating plan is for checking the feasibility of your business idea. It takes any 12 month period and looks at what your potential costs and income might be like to see if your business idea could actually make an operating profit. The start date doesn't matter for this.


The ramp up plan is the plan that takes you from nothing to operating. Many businesses will have a period of setup where they are just incurring costs and not taking any sales yet. When they do take sales, it takes a while before they increase to a respectable amount. If you want to model this then start you plan on the first month you think you will start incurring costs.


For an existing business

An existing business can start their plan as soon as you want to begin modelling the future of your business. 


Something to consider is that your plan start date defines your financial year end. You may wish to make your plan start date align with this. In the subscription version you can make the financial year end different from the plan start date.