PlanGuru from PlanGuru LLC is more focused on delivering business budgeting tools than it is on helping you create a business plan for a start-up or existing small business. It begins at $99 per year for a single-user license ($29 per month for every additional user beyond the first) and is availalbe in two versions, one for businesess and nonprofits and the other for accounts and financial advisors. An annual plan is available for both of these audiences at $899 per year with another $299 per year charged for every additional user after the first one. There are also two solution versions: first, PlanGuru Launch, which has the PlanGuru team helping you implement and most effectively leverage the company's software; second, PlanGuru Analyst, which is a turnkey service that has PlanGuru personnel building and maintaining your organization's budgets and related reporting. Though it can help you create a business plan, the real forte of PlanGuru is in budgeting and forecasting cash flow. Similar to how OnePlace focuses on project management and collaboration, PlanGuru seems more focused on finance and forecasting than on straight business plan creation. For this reason, it comes up short against dedicated business plan writing tools such as Editors' Choice winners Tarkenton GoSmallBiz and Palo Alto Software LivePlan. Getting Started Unlike most of our contenders, such as Palo Alto Software LivePlan, PlanGuru isn't a cloud-based app, instead offering desktop or local network installation options. After installing the software on your PC, you tell PlanGuru the basics about your company and it prompts you for whether you want to use account masks, which I found a bit confusing at first. An account mask is basically a set of numbers, letters, and question marks that are used to define an account number (such as 100.???.??.??). The company offers a series of online help videos, though, to familiarize you with how to use the software. Also pointing to an orientation aimed at advanced users, PlanGuru assumes you have basic accounting and finance knowledge. This definitely isn't a beginner's tool, but it is aimed at experienced small business operators, so don't think you need to be an accountant to get the most from PlanGuru. During setup, PlanGuru asks if you want to perform an analysis, and if you should include a balance sheet and what your cash flow method is, direct or indirect. In response, it'll produce a spreadsheet showing information such as your total cost of sales, operating expenses, income before taxes, and provision for taxes. You can look at your cash flows and balance sheet as well as some nonfinancial data. The software will display spreadsheets analyzing various ratios, including liquidity, efficiency, coverage profitability and operating ratios. For more sophisticated analytics, you can upload data to a related program called PlanGuru Analytics. Varied Pricing Every available iteration of PlanGuru has support for importing Microsoft Excel and Intuit QuickBooks along with help videos to walk you through the process. Unfortunately, those are the only two third-party imports available. No other data collection tool nor any other popular small to midsized business (SMB) accounting system is supported for import in PlanGuru. That's not too bad a problem initially, if you're focused on simply building a basic business planning document; but, if you want to leverage your business plan as a long-term tracking tool (which you should), then having broader support for popular SMB accounting or business intelligence applications, like FreshBooks or Microsoft Power BI would prove very useful. An add-on product, the aforementioned PlanGuru Analytics, which includes a dashboard, the ability to custom-define key performance indicators, and more detailed views of financial performance, costs $19.95 per month per user. This tool is aimed not only at business executives but also directly at financial professionals and CPAs to help them advise and analyze their business customers' operations. Those interested in PlanGuru Analytics might also want to look at PlanGuru's Advanced Reporting Excel Add-in, which allows you to create more advanced reports using Excel as the data manipulation tool and PlanGuru as the source. Moreso than business plan writing aids, PlanGuru seems to compete most directly with budgeting programs such as BudgetMaestro and Adaptive Insights. The program is designed to handle multiple departments and locations and do rolling forecasts of cash flow from month to month. For a start-up business, it can produce a statement of cash flows along with an income statement and balance sheet to provide information to a lender that is financing the business. The program can calculate the growth rate of the business and historical trends. Tools are available for accrued expenses, prepaid accounts, and lines of credit. Tellingly, one tool lets you choose from 19 different forecasting methods for different sections of the income statement and balance sheet. You can build a budget for the rest of the year and compare the actual results month by month while doing rolling forecasts. Account numbers can be brought in from QuickBooks or Excel. The company intends to add integrations with additional products next year. The program can also handle consolidations, though it's not ideal for companies with hundreds of departments and locations. Performance Measurement and Reporting The PlanGuru Analytics tool does performance measurement and reporting. You can configure different types of dashboards to show various types of ratios and report on metrics such as budgeted versus actual results. The software lets you look at data like units sold, head count, and billable hours. You can budget salaries person by person and revenues customer by customer. It will highlight variances and identify trends, graphing them if you want. The Advanced Excel Reporting tool is also helpful for building customized reports. The software lets you export reports to Excel. PlanGuru also works with providers of outsourced CFO services such as an accounting firm that wants to use the product to manage a client's business. Overall, while PlanGuru offers some great help for folks writing the finance and forecasting portions of their business plans, it's obviously aimed at more of an accounting and finance user base rather than entrepreneurs looking to get their thoughts on paper for team members and investors. Bottom Line: Less a business plan creator than a financial reporting tool, PlanGuru nevertheless does a creditable job for those seeking to build a worthwhile business plan document. Still, rank beginners or those less focused on financial calculations might need to look elsewhere.

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