AU Business Plan Writer

When to use

Triggers:

"Write a business plan" / "Draft a business plan for [business]"
"Startup plan for [idea]"
"Business plan for a [grant application / bank loan / investor pitch]"
"I need to explain my business to [stakeholder]"
Anyone starting a business, raising money, or applying for an AU government grant

Don't fire for:

Full investor-grade pitch decks (adjacent; same content, different format — the deck is a separate skill)
Financial modelling alone (use spreadsheet-analyst)
Marketing plan alone (different skill scope)

Which plan do you actually need?

Before writing, pick the right format:

Lean plan (1 page)

When: you're early-stage, testing an idea, or re-centering your own strategy. Not for external use.

Format: Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder) or a simpler 1-pager covering problem, solution, customer, channel, revenue, cost, metric.

Time: 90 minutes.

Standard business plan (8–15 pages)

When: bank loan, commercial lease, government grant, non-investor operational planning.

Format: the 10 sections below. Aim for 8–15 pages. Anything longer gets skimmed.

Time: 1–2 days (first draft), plus iteration.

Investor-grade plan (20–40 pages + appendices)

When: pitching VCs, angels, or seeking >$500k investment.

Format: standard plan + detailed financials + market analysis + team deep-dive + risk analysis.

Time: 1–2 weeks, with your accountant / mentor reviewing.

Most AU SMEs need the lean plan for internal clarity OR the standard plan for external stakeholders. Investor-grade is the rarer case.

The 10 sections that matter (standard plan)

1. Executive summary (1 page, written last)

The business in one sentence
The problem / opportunity
Your solution + what makes it different
Target customer
Revenue model
3-year financial snapshot (revenue + profit)
The ask (funding amount, lease term, grant value) + what it unlocks

Reader spends 90 seconds here. If they're not engaged, they don't read the rest. Write it last; revise until every sentence earns its spot.

2. Problem / opportunity (1–2 pages)

Specific, not generic. "Small businesses struggle with [X]" is weak. Quantify:

How big is the market affected?
How much does the problem cost the sufferers?
Why hasn't it been solved already?
What's changed recently that makes now the right time?

If you can't answer "why now", you don't have a business — you have an idea.

3. Solution / offer (1–2 pages)

What you sell / deliver
How it works (short)
What's uniquely yours
What's the customer journey from "first contact" to "paid and happy"

Prefer specific examples over abstractions. "We automate quotes for electrical contractors in 10 minutes instead of 2 hours" beats "we provide productivity enhancements for tradespeople".

4. Market analysis (1–2 pages)

TAM (Total Addressable Market) — all potential customers globally or nationally
SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) — realistically reachable given your language/geography/channel
SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) — what you could plausibly win in 3 years

Sources you can cite:

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics)
IBISWorld (industry reports; usually paywalled but libraries often have access)
Industry association data
Your own customer research

Avoid:

Fake-precision TAMs ("$47.2B market")
Top-down estimates with no customer-count grounding ("1% of a $500B market")

5. Customer (1–2 pages)

Who specifically buys. Not demographics — buyers:

What triggers them to look for a solution?
What do they try before they find you?
What does success look like for them?
What would make them switch away from you?

Reference the customer-persona-builder skill for the deeper workup.

6. Competition (1 page)

Direct competitors (same solution, same customer)
Indirect competitors (different solution, same job-to-be-done)
The status quo (doing nothing / a manual process) — this is usually your biggest competitor

For each competitor:

Name
What they're strong at
What they're weak at
How you win against them

Don't disparage. A section that sneers at competitors tells the reader you're insecure.

7. Operations (1–2 pages)

How the business actually works day-to-day:

Where do you physically operate? (home, office, factory, remote)
What do you need to produce/deliver? (supplier relationships, equipment, software)
What's the bottleneck? (your time, material cost, skilled labour availability)
What's your quality control?
Key partnerships / suppliers and their risks

8. Team (1 page)

Founders / leaders — name, role, relevant experience, why they can pull this off
Gaps (roles you'll hire for with the funding)
Advisors / mentors (only list real ones)
Board (if applicable)

Include a one-line "why this team can execute this plan". Investors and grant reviewers read this section hardest.

9. Financials (2–4 pages, appendices as needed)

Three years (minimum), ideally five for investor-grade:

P&L projection

Revenue by product/service line
Cost of sales
Gross profit
Operating expenses (itemised)
EBITDA
Net profit
Tax provisioning (27.5% or 30% corporate rate depending on entity size / base rate entity status)

Cashflow projection

Opening cash
Operating receipts
Operating payments
Capex
Financing activities
Closing cash (should never go negative without an explanation)

Balance sheet snapshot (year-end per year)

Assumptions sheet — every number has a source (historical actual, industry benchmark, customer commitment, founder's best guess with rationale)

Reviewers check: do the assumptions survive basic skepticism? A 300% year-1 growth assumption without a customer pipeline is a red flag.

10. The ask (0.5–1 page)

How much you want
What it's for (itemised — "$80k equipment, $40k initial inventory, $30k 6 months runway")
What it unlocks (milestones the funding lets you hit)
What you offer in return (for investors: equity; for lenders: security + interest; for grants: outcomes achieved)
How the funder gets their money back / return on investment

AU-specific funding pathways

Flag these in the plan where relevant:

Instant asset write-off — allows businesses (under the turnover threshold, currently $10M) to immediately deduct eligible equipment up to the cap. Cap + eligibility change with federal budget cycles; check current threshold.
R&D Tax Incentive — refundable tax offset for companies conducting eligible R&D. For SMEs (turnover <$20M), 43.5% refundable offset; for bigger, non-refundable.
Export Market Development Grants (EMDG) — Austrade grants for export-capable businesses
Business.gov.au grants finder — government grant aggregator
State-level grants — each state runs innovation / small business / manufacturing / clean energy schemes; check your state treasury/business portal
Industry schemes — clean energy (ARENA), agriculture (ABARES), arts (Australia Council), defence (DISP), etc.

Include in the plan's "ask" section: what's your realistic funding mix? e.g. "$60k bank loan + $40k R&D refund + $30k founder capital".

The reviewer's checklist

Before you submit, read through as a skeptical reviewer:

□ Executive summary stands alone — a time-poor reader gets the whole business in 90 seconds
□ Problem quantified with a number from a real source
□ Solution clearly differentiated from competitors
□ Target customer is specific, not "anyone who needs X"
□ TAM/SAM/SOM grounded in customer math, not top-down guesses
□ Competition section includes the status quo
□ Operations section acknowledges the real bottleneck
□ Team section is honest about gaps
□ Financials have an assumptions sheet
□ Cashflow never goes negative without an explanation
□ Ask is specific + shows how repayment / ROI happens
□ No typos, no placeholder text ("TBD"), no contradictions
□ Page count 8–15 for standard, no fluff

Common plan-writing anti-patterns

Generic problem statements — "small businesses want to grow" applies to everyone
Top-down market sizing — "if we capture 1% of a $50B market" tells me nothing
Unsourced numbers — every stat needs a source or you're making it up
Hockey-stick projections — going from $0 to $10M in 3 years needs extraordinary evidence
"We have no competition" — you do; you haven't looked hard enough
Too many products — focusing on 1 product/customer now is stronger than 5 maybes
Founder exclusivity — "we're the only ones who could do this" reads as arrogance
Mission-statement filler — leadership teams love these; reviewers skim them

Lean plan (1-pager) for internal clarity

When you don't need the full 10-section doc, do a 1-page lean plan:

[Business name] — lean plan — [date]

Problem:                         Solution:

Customer:                         Channel:

Revenue model:                    Costs:

Key metric:                       Key risk:

Next 90 days:                     Milestone in 12 months:

Every 3 months, revisit. Does any box need updating? If yes, what does that tell you?

Output format

Per request:

Lean plan (if that's what you need) — 1 page, 8 boxes
Standard plan — 8–15 pages, 10 sections
Financials spreadsheet structure — tab list and column names for Xero / Excel / Google Sheets
Assumptions sheet — one row per assumption, with source or rationale
Reviewer's checklist — for self-assessment before submission
Version history — plans evolve; track v1 / v2 / v3 with date and what changed

What this skill does NOT do

Build detailed financial models. Use an accountant or a dedicated FP&A tool for 5-year monthly models with multiple scenarios.
Validate the idea. The plan documents the business; customer discovery validates it. Different work.
Write grant applications end-to-end. Grant writing is a specialist skill with specific scoring criteria; the plan feeds in but doesn't substitute.
Replace legal / accounting advice on entity structure, tax treatment, IP protection, etc.

Tier access

Base. Universal need — most operators touch a plan at some stage. Pro-tier members get a plan review cycle with a THL advisor before submission.

Related skills

customer-persona-builder — feeds the Customer section
pricing-packaging-professional-services — informs revenue model for pro-services businesses
au-bas-gst-quarterly-prep — once the plan becomes an operating business, this comes next
ai-roi-measurement-for-sme — once you're live, this measurement discipline applies to the plan's assumptions