StratPad is in the midst of reorganizing its offerings into three packages: StratPad Cloud, StratPad Connect, and StratPad College. StratPad Cloud, which begins at $19.99 per month, is what you'll use to create a business plan or, more accurately, it helps you construct a project plan for your business. It helps you identify your company's strategic goals and the steps required to get there. Overall, while it's a solid value, from a features perspective, StratPad doesn't quite merit the Editors' Choice nod that was earned by Palo Alto Software LivePlan and Tarkenton GoSmallBiz. Pricing and Versions The aforementioned plan is called the Business Plan and it includes up to 5 simultaneous plans, unlimited email support and the ability to share plans in real time. It can be upgraded to a $39.99 per month Unlimted Plan that has the same features as the Business Plan but allows you to work on an unlimted number of plans simultaneously. A little confusingly, both those "monthly" pricing numbers are only valid if you opt to have them billed annually. If you really want to pay monthly, you'll need to add $10 per month to both prices. Although I didn't test it, StratPad also offers an accompanying iPad app unlike the desktop-only PlanGuru. StratPad Connect was still an "upcoming" service at the time of this writing, but the company promised it would be available soon. Similiar to {{ZIFFARTICLE id="338395">EquityNet, StratPad Connect seeks to establish a network of entrepreneurs seeking funding and investors looking to provide it. It's also a location-based service that promises to connect users with vetted and even certified local professionals, such as accountants or designers. StratPad College amounts to StratPad's collection of learning content. This is available for free subscription and covers everything from entrepreneurial strategy to understanding financial documents and advice on how to write a business plan. Most business plan creation tools enable you to create a static document which you then present to investors. StratPad is a little different as it's more of an aid to getting your thoughts in order and, secondarily, recording them. StratPad helps you figure out the business plan document structure and how to collect data. Then, rather than having to write every bit on its website, you can download the online document to Microsoft Word, whereupon you independently add additional verbiage, graphics, formatting, or whatever gives your business plan more oomph. Like its competitors, StratPad makes you fill in a lot of text boxes and numerical fields; you are prompted along by the application to respond to investors' usual questions. However, instead of creating a single document in which you describe the ways your business will change the world, StratPad makes you describe how you'll accomplish that feat. The "Strat" in the product name definitely stands for strategic and it takes this purpose seriously. A Business Plan Construction Kit Think of StratPad as a project management program combined with a business plan construction kit. You identify business goals that serve a customer need, and add financial data such as expected income and expenses. The software then guides you through a project plan that makes you articulate how you'll achieve those goals. StratPad has you describe the business' projects or phases: Build out the restaurant, launch, perform its ongoing marketing, and so forth. You add detail for each task and activity, including costs and income, and you identify metrics for success. A significant plus is StratPad's really good educational documentation, which I believe most small business entrepreneurs will find enlightening. There are 20 short videos that show you how to use each product feature, including mentoring on business fundamentals, strategic thinking, and building business projections. Because StratPad aims to educate rather than drag you through a "follow the bouncing ball" exercise, you have to be more creative when it comes time to fill in fields. It asks good questions such as "What are the key problems faced by your customers/clients?" but answering them requires independent thought. This implies you'll spend time staring at a lot of blank boxes, waiting for inspiration rather than filling in a lot of fields with numbers. Fortunately, the website's videos and help text are clear, persuasive, and useful. Its Track Your Progress section connects to Intuit's QuickBooks Online so you see up-to-the-minute actual financial results graphed against your business plan's projections. For all its strengths in project planning, StratPad is a little light when it comes to collecting financial data as you'll need to work with a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel before you start plugging data into the cloud application. You're prompted to paste in revenue and expenses associated with each project task, for instance, but there's no way to fiddle with those numbers inside the software ("What if I tell the investor we'll sell 300 widgets at $20 each, not just 200 of them?") and have the totals recalculate. There's also no built-in way to express variable income (such as an uptick in holiday sales). Expect to do that work before you fire up StratPad or to explain it in the Word document later on. But StratPad lets you export your financial charts back to Excel when you're done, which is a feature that Enloop, EquityNet, Palo Alto Software LivePlan, and The Business Plan Shop all do not offer. A Capable Facilitator StratPad's reports are truly lovely and in more than a pretty-presentation way. Yes, you get the expected profit and loss charts, income statements, and a monthly financial worksheet, in an easy-to-scan format reflecting all the data entry you just did. But StratPad uses the project-task data you entered, too, including an overall strategic diagram, Gantt charts, and meeting agendas to address the tasks you scheduled. In addition, you can export its financial charts to Excel—the only one of these applications to do so. If you have a sensible business strategy, the documents StratPad creates will do a bang-up job of convincing investors that you can pull it off. StratPad also offers a service to help business owners find others to work with, such as nearby accountants and lawyers, promising high-quality matches between entrepreneurs and lenders. I didn't test this service, though. If you know what you're doing with the business, and just want software to organize a business plan with useful graphics and diagrams to map out how to get there, StratPad is an excellent choice. The price is right, certainly—most people will be happy with the free version—and its output is a Word file that may give your plan enough of a skeleton that you feel comfortable adding to. Bottom Line: If you've got a clear idea of what you want your burgeoning organization to accomplish, but you just need some help with organizing and project management, then StratPad may be your ideal solution.

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