Support – BizPlanBuilder (Windows App)

Upgrade?

Depending upon how old your app / template is (more than a year?!?), you may want to consider an upgrade.

QuickTour

Click to take the Quick Tour of BizPlanBuilder

This is a brief PowerPoint show illustrating how BizPlanBuilder is laid out and how the various parts all work.
It will download a PowerPoint show to your Downloads folder

About 2.8MB

The Handbook of Business Planning

Handbook of Business Planning.pdf

Download the user manual — BizPlanBuilder “The Handbook of Business Planning”

(Includes Getting-Started Guides for both Windows & Macintosh)

NOTE: On the dashboard, under Business Plan, click the lower left tile and you can read it there too.

About 10MB

“The Thinking Behind Your Business Plan”

This is a professional taping of Burke Franklin speaking to the entrepreneurs attending an CEO Space class. (Burke is one of CEO Space’s most popular senior instructors and he teaches business planning there every 2 months.) He discusses every section of a business plan from the perspective of your audience — what and who you need to be thinking about as you approach every aspect of your business plan. ~100 minutes

Where to Find the “Supporting Docs”

The extra templates are in the left-side menu, scroll-down and you’ll see their folders.
Click on the [+] to open the folders.

On the dashboard, they are all on the Business Plan page.

Forgot Password?

Log in using “admin” as your username
and “123456” as your password.

When you get to the plan editing screen,
pull-down under Users to reset your password.

Collaborating with BizPlanBuilder Using DropBox

Here’s how to share your business planning project using BizPlanBuilder with DropBox…
(Even if you are just want to work on the same project from your own office PC, Laptop and Home PC.)
The idea is to use your desktop copy of BizPlanBuilder and store, access & share the working document files in DropBox.

First, get DropBox… grab it here: DropBox, and install it to your computer.
You can share it with your partner(s)…
(They won’t need their own DropBox account for this project.)

1. Install DropBox
   • Create a folder for your project
   • Share that folder with your partner(s) — enter an email and DropBox will send it to them
2. Install BizPlanBuilder (Launch it in a moment…)
3. Locate the “Jian Documents” folder (on the Desktop or in Shared Documents)
   • Drag the entire folder to the new DropBox folder
4. Launch BizPlanBuilder
5. Click the “Change” button and navigate to DropBox
6. Look for the “Jian Documents” folder in DropBox
   • Single-click on Jian Documents and click OK.
   • [x] Make Default Path
7. Enter:
   • username: [make something up]
   • password: [make something up]
   • [x] Remember My Password
   • Add User(s) — Give each partner their own username and password
   • Click Next
8. Start a New Project – Select BizPlanBuilder
   • Not sure what you’re are doing, but if you’re raising big $ from a VC, choose “Angel VC Plan”
   • [x] Select All (at bottom of window)
   • Next
9. Fill-in your info
10. Give each of you ‘Full Access / Full Control’
11. Send partner(s) an email with…
    • the BizPlanBuilder download link (unless they already have their own copy)
    • his/her serial # (They need their own paid copy with their own unique serial #)
    • username and password
    • and have them follow steps 4-7

You have full read/write privileges.
Next, on the main project screen, you will see all of the sections of your plan on the left.
When you double-click one, it will check out that section to you — No one can work on it until you check it back in by closing it.
(Save any docs in place — do not save-as, because they will then save outside the system and not be traceable…)

OK!
Rock on!

Formatting the Table of Contents in Word

Office 2003 / 2007 / 2010

If you wish to insert or reconstruct the Table of Contents, it is actually easiest of you start over and insert the Table from scratch.

Simply pull-down under Insert, in the Word menu above, to Reference, then Index & Tables.

We used “Heading 1” as the style for all section headings.
For simplicity of reading and reference, Heading 1 should be sufficient, nevertheless, we used Heading 2 for the blue sub-sections should you feel the need to add a second-level to your Table of Contents.

Error / Won’t Assemble

It sometimes does that when not all of the docs have been opened and edited.

(The system converts the original doc to your version of Word upon opening.)

If all the docs checked are not the same version of Word, then you can get the error.

So, open each doc, then click Save.

(Not Save As – just save the doc in place.)

Assemble

P.S. Best not to try to include the Excel and PowerPoint docs in your narrative plan assembly.

Transfer Software to New Computer

I have a new computer and want to transfer my Business Plan software to use on my new computer.

1. Do you still have the original file you purchased and downloaded?
   (Look in your “Downloads” folder)
2. You can copy that to the new system and double click to install…
3. Use your original serial #.
4. To copy your completed business plan(s), on the old machine, navigate to
   “C:UsersPublicDocumentsJIAN Documents”
   (Or click the Windows icon and enter ‘jian documents’ to search for it.)
5. Best to copy the entire folder over to replace the same newly installed folder on your new PC.
   or copy the directory named for the user you are migrating (I.e. – User) and the User.mdb file.
6. Then, paste them in the same location on the new machine.
7. You should now be able to log in as the old user and see all business plans.

Upgrade from BizPlanBuilder v8

The previous installation of BizPlanBuilder v8 leaves some pesky residual code that doesn’t get overwritten somehow by the new installation.

Here’s how to install your upgrade…

• First, uninstall BizPlanBuilder completely.
• Use the JIAN uninstaller (not Microsoft!)
• (x) Automatic
• Click on Start
• => go to All Programs
• => JIAN folder

• Next, open you Program Files folder (on your C: drive)
• Drag the JIAN folder to Trash.
• Empty Trash

OK!
Now install the new version.
(Again.)

To Add More Profit Centers…

(We accommodate up to 10 — sometimes adding too many overwhelms investors.
May be better to consolidate profit centers to show fewer than 10.)
That said, here’s how to add more:

On the Basic Assumptions tab, Click on line 27 (just below Item 9 in the table)
Next, click Insert (very top menu) and insert Row.
Insert as many rows as you need.
Fill in the name of the profit center(s) you want to add.

Throughout the model, you’ll need to repeat this procedure…
It’s will be a little different — I’ll explain:

For example, on the Summary page (tab), in the “Projected Product/Service Revenue” section,
click on line just above “Other”
Click Insert (again, from very top menu) and insert Row.
Insert exactly the same number of rows as before (on the Assumptions page).

Next, you’re going to copy the line above and “fill down” into the new empty rows.
Click on the Excel row number left of ‘Product 9’ and drag down to highlight all of the newly created rows.
Click Edit (top menu) and Fill Down.

Voila!

BizPlanBuilder + Windows 10 Fix

Some things changed with Windows 10, please try this:

I’ve found some workarounds.
Before you do anything, review the instructions below.

NOTE: If you’re having trouble just installing the app, make sure that any anti-Virus programs are temporarily off.

We’re fixing this asap, but in the meantime…
there are several things you can do:

1) Run as Administrator

Right-click the program name and click “Run a Administrator.”

2) Run App in “Compatibility Mode”

This makes Windows 10 behave like a previous version of Windows (we suggest Windows 7)

1. Click the Windows icon (bottom of screen)
2. Right-click the program name, select Properties (bottom of menu), and then select the Compatibility tab.
3. [x] Run this program in compatibility mode for:
   From the drop-down menu, click: [Windows 7]
4. Click OK!

3) Move the “JIAN Documents” folder to the folder just above it

It seems that Windows 10 has changed its folder structure slightly,
so the current app installer drops the app into the wrong folder…

I believe that you’re seeing this:
Crazy wrong error messages because the system just cannot locate the data file!

Here’s the fix:

1. See below…
2. Click on the folder icon at the bottom.
3. Click o the “OS (C:)” in the left menu tree (Slightly shaded / 3rd from bottom below)
4. Click on the Public folder to open it.
5. Right-click on the “Public Documents” folder to open it separately.
6. Drag the “JIAN Documents” folder into the “Public” folder
   (The Win 10 system just installed the MarketingBuilder app in one folder too deep!)

After you move the “JIAN Documents” folder to the “Public” folder, restart the app.
You may still see some error messages, but keep clicking “OK”
You may need to Add your username and password again… Click the “Add User” button.
Re-enter your username and password and check “[x] Remember my Password”
Make sure the File Location (in the middle box in the window below) looks like this:
(If not, click “Change” and browse to the “Public” folder and click “JIAN Documents”)
[x] Make Default Path => the system will remember your settings in the future!
Click Next and continue on!!!

Remember, we’ve updated everything and incorporated all of our apps and templates
into a collaborative cloud-based dashboard.