A goal without a plan is just a wish

‘A Goal without a plan is just a wish’ – this is a phrase I found in the book ‘How to Grow Business For Entrepreneurs’ by Alex Blyth. This is a good book; it is about how difficult small businesses can grow their business. Besides, it gives you some pointers to consider on how you may grow your small business.

We have come to an end of year 2009, look at your resolution, the goal that you have set for your business; have you achieved what you had set at the beginning of 2009?

Many of us like to set a goal, an objective to achieve at the end of the calendar year, but many a time we failed. We failed to plan for the process in achieving our goal. Many small business owner do not really have a time to plan to achieve their goal, worst of all, they do not know how to plan. 

QuickBooks understand your problem. QuickBooks created a Business Planning feature that allows you to do a simple planning for your business.

‘Financial management is the core in business management. Businesses went without a proper financial management may not be able to grow or even went into bankruptcy.’

How can we create a business plan in QuickBooks?

Note: Not all versions of QuickBooks have the Business Planning Tool feature.

From the Company menu, select Planning & Budgeting and follow by ‘Use Business Plan Tool’.

Business Plan Tool (QuickBooks Business Planner) is an add-on application in QuickBooks. It is a wizard guiding you in creating a plan for your business. The wizard consisting of:

• Welcome
• Company
• Income
• Expenses
• Interview 
• Plan

Under the last section – Plan, the wizard will guide you in writing out your business plan according to the topics such as:

• Executive Summary
• Company Background
• Products
• Services
• The Industry, Competition and Market
• Marketing Plan
• Operating Plan
• Management, Organization and Ownership
• Goals and Strategies
• Financial Assumptions

You can add, edit or remove any of the topics stated in the wizard. This business planner helps small business owner create a plan for their businesses.  With a good plan, you will be able to achieve your business goal in a more systematical way.

I would like to wish you luck and have a prosperous 2010.