“Small business people often think they know how to sell their product or service and everyone will love it,” says Schulz. The reality is that an entrepreneur is usually good at certain aspects of their business enterprise, such as product creation, marketing or contract negotiation, but they simply aren't equipped to excel at everything. Business planning software is an excellent method for covering all the bases required of a prosperous endeavor, she says.

PlanGuru is among the more popular types of business planning software. According to company spokesperson Tripp Graham, PlanGuru is a “budgeting, forecasting and performance review software designed to build any type of forward-looking financial analysis.  Whether a business needs a high-level forecast for a lender or a multi-departmental operating budget, PlanGuru enables them to efficiently create intelligent projections (with all 3 financial statements integrated).”

For its part, PlanGuru replaces Excel in building and maintaining business projections. In addition, users don't have to worry about the tedious and error prone task of complicated, formula building necessitated by Excel, says Graham. Instead, users can select the method/rate they wish to use for budgeting and forecasting that line item off of, “and the projections are automatically calculated,” he says. What's more, all three financial statements are kept in sync.

As it happens, Schulz is not familiar with PlanGuru. However, she has worked with infusionsoft and has heard “good things” about Business Plan Pro and Bplans. While all these business forecasting software programs share some similarities, they are different, too. For example, Bplans offers free templates and other programs include suggestions on how to create a successful marketing plan. It's best to research them online and even ask other business owners what they're using.

The programs also differ in price. A one-time license with PlanGuru, for example, costs between $399-$799 while Business Plan Pro is currently on sale for $79.99 from its regular $99.99 price.

“As PlanGuru is built for forward-thinking financial analysis, it does offer the ability to directly import historical results from QuickBooks, Excel and many other general ledger systems,” says Graham. A trial version of the software can also be downloaded free of charge.

There are three main uses of business planning software, says Schulz. They include helping an entrepreneur:

* Understand their enterprise's overall strategy and goals (mostly monetary)
* Organize business expenses
* Calculate company revenues

When a business owner runs their company based on their own personal, and of course, subjective opinions on their goods and services, they run the risk of running the company into the ground, says Schulz. That's why she is such a strong advocate of business forecasting software.

“Software is a good idea because it is not subjective. It creates an objective report, sans the emotion” of the entrepreneur, she says.

---

Tami Kamin Meyer is an Ohio attorney and freelance writer who writes about law and business. Reach her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. She tweets as @girlwithapen.