Can I use your free business plan samples?
Question:
As I browsed thru your sites, I noticed that there are so many free samples shown. Am I allowed to use the free samples for me to prepare my own Business Plan for a start-up company, without first purchasing your professional tools?
Answer:
We posted more than 60 sample business plans on the Web at www.bplans.com so they could serve as a resource to entrepreneurs. They are there where you can read them, in their entirety, free. Use them to get an idea of what a business plan is, what kind of information it contains, and how it is presented. Although you can read those plans on the Web, they are all developed in Business Plan Pro, and therefore they are all in Business Plan Pro file format, so you can download and edit them if you have an updated version of Business Plan Pro. So yes, you do need to own Business Plan Pro to access those business plans in a way that you can change them and make them your own. Business Plan Pro also includes more than 140 additional sample plans, beyond those available for reading on the Web. Sample business plans are useful mainly as examples. Nobody really uses them as they are, but rather they use them as starting points, because they have to modify the company description, product description, market analysis, strategy, management team, and financials. If you try to use somebody else's plan as your own, you run the risk of a reader recognizing the plan from the Web, and of course it doesn't describe your own business. The use of Business Plan Pro includes permission to use the sample plans as starting points and modify them for your own business plan. There is no violation of copyright or intellectual property when sample plans are modified and used for business planning purposes only. There is however a violation of copyright if you use a sample plan taken from Business Plan Pro for any other purpose without proper permission. Tim Berry
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