How to create a successful business plan

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6 elements of a successful business plan

Writing and executing a successful business plan can increase your business growth by about 30%!

However, only 47% of SMEs own a formal written down and recorded business plan, with remaining 25% of SMEs only using informal business planning and 23% not using a business plan at all.

Whichever category your business falls into, creating or improving your business plan can bring in major benefits, such as setting up achievable objectives, defining your business vision and future direction and capitalising on growth opportunities. They will also enable you to review your performance and counteract poor-decision making.

Having all aspects of your business, its core values, performance and strategy, in one document will certainly help you to visualise the future of your business and set goals with a time limit in order to put the plan into practice.

In our experience at Krystal Clear Accounting, the 6 elements of a successful business plan contains the following:

Transparency – identifying key business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as a part of the SWOT analysis is vital in order to demonstrate awareness of your business place in the market. Including weaknesses into the business plan will put you in a stronger position to either incorporate viable solutions or use that awareness to ensure business strengths and opportunities outweigh the weaknesses and threats.
Customer knowledge – being aware of key audience demographics (age, gender, lifestyle choices, income, geographic location, communication preferences, their needs and issues that your business could cater for) would assist in creating a business plan, suited for targeting your specific customer type that would be interested in your offer rather than a generalised version of a typical customer, who might easily ignore your offering in a competitive marketplace.
SMART objectives – setting out specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based objectives will help you to be realistic with your business planning and increase deliverability, credibility and internal (employee) and external (supplier and investor) buy-in of your overall business strategy.
Engaging content – writing up a business plan that is more story-like rather than report-like will help you to inspire the readers and build confidence in your business. Leave out any unnecessary information and fill it up with narrative and details of interest to the reader.
Audience knowledge – targeting the message and tone of your business plan towards its potential reader (employees, investors, shareholders, suppliers) will help to effectively ‘sell’ to them. Even though they will look at the business plan as a predominantly sales or marketing document, you should also be careful not to oversell by using ‘flowery’ language and exaggeration. This will only diminish your credibility among your key stakeholders, so, being aware of the reader of your business plan will help you to avoid this trap.
Schedule milestone short-term goals, leading to a long-term plan – your business plan should ideally encompass five or more years in the future. However, setting out short-term goals, which will lead to the achievement of the long-term plans will ensure your understanding of how to plan for and achieve growth and success as a business. This involves breaking down five years into one-year plan, and narrowing down the scope of these to quarterly-goals.

If you’d like pulling together a business plan ping an email to [email protected] or call 0161 410 0020.

Remember “Not all Accountants are the same!”

It is important that you take professional advice before making any decisions based on the information that you learnt here. While every effort has been made to make sure it is accurate it cannot be precisely tailored to your personal circumstances. This article is for general information only and no action should be taken, or refrained from, as a result of this information. Professional advice should be taken based on specific circumstances in each individual case. Whilst we endeavour to ensure that the information contained in the article is correct, no liability will be accepted by Krystal Clear Accounting which is a trading name of Kim Marlor Associates Ltd or damages of any kind arising from the contents of this communication, or for any action, inaction or decision taken as a result of using any such information.

What are Bank Feeds and how do they work?

In short, bank feeds create a digital link between your business bank account and your accounting software, such as Xero or QuickBooks.

This means bank transactions are automatically downloaded into the accounting software. This simple piece of automation, completely removes the need to manually input every bank receipt and payment into the accounting software.

Having bank feeds in place, saves a HUGE amount of time bookkeeping. That’s because it completely removes the need to manually input bank transactions into the accounting software.

Saving time bookkeeping isn’t the only benefit for the business….

What are the main benefits to a business using bank feeds?

Bank feeds automate, what was previously, a time-consuming task of entering all the bank transactions into the accounting software.

This saves the business a HUGE amount of time (& money) spent on bookkeeping.

With bank transactions being downloaded from the bank every day, it means it’s quicker and easier to keep the bank balance in the accounting software up-to date.

With the accounting software up-to date, the bank is updated daily which gives you a clearer, real-time view of your business’s cash flow.

This makes it easier for you to plan your cashflow, and take action to improve it.

There is always the risk of errors being made when data is being manually inputted into the accounting system. It is often time-consuming to find and correct any errors. Also, if an error is large then the Profit & loss and Balance Sheet reports will be inaccurate and potentially misleading.

Automating the bank transaction entry previously manual process, reduces the risk of errors being made and ensures that the bookkeeping records and reports are accurate.

How to Link Your Bank to Xero

Ensure that your bank account is set up for online banking. This feature is typically available from all major banks.

Log into your Xero account and navigate to the banking section. Select ‘Add Bank Account’ and follow the prompts to search for your bank.

After adding your bank account details, you’ll see an option to set up bank feeds. Click ‘Agree’ to the terms, then securely log into your online banking portal through Xero to authorize the connection.

Are Bank Feeds Safe & Secure?

Yes.

Firstly, having bank feeds in place ONLY means bank transactions are downloaded into the accounting system. They do NOT give anyone else access to the business bank account.

Secondly, XERO has various security measures in place to give you a piece of mind that your financial data is safe and secure:

Encrypted Connections: Xero uses advanced encryption technology to secure the data transmission from your bank to Xero. This means your sensitive information is encrypted during transit and cannot be intercepted or read by unauthorized parties.

Compliance and Standards: Xero adheres to high standards of data security compliance, thus ensuring that its practices meet or exceed industry security standards and regulations.

Regular Renewals: To maintain a high level of security, XERO requires that the bank feed connection is renewed every 90 days. This process is straightforward and helps ensure that the integrity of your financial data is always protected.

In Summary

In short, having bank feeds really saves businesses time and money on their bookkeeping.

They automate and eliminate what is otherwise a time consuming and error prone manual process.

Bank feeds is just one of the ways technology can be used to help business owners improve the financial side of their business.

How to create a successful business plan