Enloop – Custom Business Plans

Whether you’re opening a hair salon, a yoga studio, or an online retail outlet, there’s one thing you’re going to need before anything else: a business plan. Coming up with an accurate, professional, and insightful business plan is the key to attracting investors and securing financing from banks. Enloop is a web-app that can help people quickly come up with professional plans from scratch.

Take the first step in turning your business dreams into reality by selecting a pricing plan and signing up for an Enloop account. Enter your basic company information, choose a forecasting model, and then invite people to view and edit the business plan you create. Enloop will help you get on track by asking a series of business-related questions and facts about the company you’re planning to build. Based on your answers to these questions, Enloop will automatically generate what it calls a “Business Idea Text.” Next, you’ll want to add information about your company’s products and services, marketing expenses, key managers and owners, payroll forecasts, and financial information. Enloop will synthesize all the information you put in to create professional financial forecasts that show your potential sales, profit & loss, and cash floss. When combined with your Business Idea Text, this information encompasses a complete business plan.

In the top right-hand corner of the screen you’ll see an EPS score. EPS stands for Enloop Performance Score, and you can use it to gauge the odds of your business succeeding. If you’re not thrilled with your score, no problem. Just go back and make some minor adjustments to the figures and stats you’ve put in. When you’re happy with your score and thrilled with what you’ve set up, download your complete business plan as a PDF and start sending it to potential investors. It’s really that easy.

Practical Uses:

• Create a business plan for the pizza parlor you’re planning to open
• Quickly create a business plan that you can share with potential investors
• Learn how to optimize your finances to improve your chances of success
• Find out how likely you are to turn a profit with your current business plan

Insider Tips:

• EPS scores provide real-time feedback on the financial data that users put in
• Finished business plans can be downloaded as PDFs and printed
• Enloop automatically generates ratio reports for each company
• Users can invite their colleagues to view or edit the reports they’re working on

What we liked:

• Enloop creates custom financial forecasts for each company
• Each user gets a report card that rates his company on its forecasted performance
• People who get passing grades on their report cards receive a verification number that bankers and investors can use to confirm their EPSscores
• Users can find the answers to whatever questions they have about creating new plans in the Enloop Knowledge Base

What we didn’t like:

• Nothing

Alternatives:

• Plan Cruncher – http://plancruncher.com

Company Info:

• Launched: May 2011 (Public Beta)
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California
• Founded by: Cynthia McCahon
• Web site: http://www.enloop.com

Costs:

• Free plan
• Advanced plan is $9.95/month
• Professional plan is $39.95/month