I had no experience writing a business plan, and LivePlan helped me through it.

it allows me to focus on the structure and all the important things that need to be included but also kept short and easy to read and understand. Having the prompts in each section helps me stay on task. I really like how the forecasting auto-populates based on data in the various sections. its easy to keep tabs on everything and see how your business looks on paper.

The ease. I had to start creating projections for the funding process and was dreading it. I found this on a Saturday morning and by early afternoon I had yearly/monthly numbers for 5 years P&L, Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cashflow. Keep in mind this included time getting used to the software and answering questions outside of the software itself (ie units sold per month). But these weren't just useless numbers, they were based on results of answering questions about the business. And they did a wonderful job making it simple. For example, you add a new product, the revenue type (one time, recurring, unit, etc), units sold by month, price and churn. And because you won't get it right the first time, it makes adjusting the estimated units by month easy. Similar entry for all your expenses such as employees (by department/position/start date/salary) and other expenses. So now that you've entered all this - it then automatically becomes available in your business plan. The business plan is easy too as they put all the typical sections (problem, market size, team, etc) in there but it's easily customizable as well. And finally, you can invite people to edit or just view it as I've done for investors. So investors groups would like you to put your info into their own "room", but I've just given them access here so that I don't have to keep multiple versions up to date. I tell every startup I meet and all the local startup agencies to have their startups use it too.