How to Customize, Use and Save Your Documents

Preview a Document

To open and preview a document, click the “magnifying glass” icon.
This will give you read-only access.

Supporting Commentary

The green text is the supporting commentary giving you ideas and making suggestions as to what to think about before you start editing or customizing various areas of the document template.

You’ll find this green commentary throughout the documents.

In the upper right corner, there’s always a toggle button that you can click to turn them off or on.

Document Organization

One of the cool things is how the templates are organized. We anticipate that you will have and use many of them as you build your business and that you’ll want to customize them, use them over and over again, and save the final documents where they can easily be found in the future (in a hurry!).

Thinking way ahead, this also makes it easier and faster for a potential acquirer to perform their due-diligence.

Access to all docs works the same, for example:

1. The Default is open to All Documents
2. [M]aster templates – These are the original templates provided by Business Power Tools
   1. They can easily be repeatedly modified and saved under “My Templates”
   2. You cannot break or lose them! We will be adding more!
3. My [T]emplates – These are your customized templates that you can use over and over again
   1. They are automatically saved here
4. My [D]ocuments – After you fill-in the variables with specifics, you can save them here as finalized documents.
   1. Consider how you want them to be listed (imagine keeping all of you completed docs here.)
   2. Idea: [doc title] – [recipient’s name]
   3. ex: “Invitation to Board of Advisors – Doe, John”
5. Add Your Own Docs: Clicking the “[+]” (above right) enables you to add your own docs to the system.
   1. Simply copy and paste into the template editor.
   2. This will first save as a custom template.
6. Click on the colored bar to access just the docs you want.

Customizing Your Document Templates

Each template needs to be customized first, before inserting the variables.

It will become a reusable custom template, organized under “My Templates”

Inserting the variables comes after and is when you are actually using the template to create the final doc.

EXAMPLE:  Creating a reusable letter to Invite special consultants to join your Board of Advisors.
(Investors will likely ask who are your advisors. Think about doing this ‘for real’ right now!)

1. Select the Business Plan tab
2. Click the Supporting Documents panel / tile.
3. Click the “magnifying glass” icon to open “Invitation – Board of Advisors”
4. Edit and customize the document:
   • Black text, Highlighted sections are the content of your document.
   • You’ll likely want to work around the variable fields, but they can be customized as well.
   • ex: [Company Name / Alias]
   • See the “Add Replacement Fields” drop-down menu in the editor.
   • You can edit the green text if you want — in case you’re adding instructions for the next person.
   • We suggest leaving the comments alone (they can always easily be toggled on/off from any view of the doc) and may be useful for future users.
5. Click the “Diskette” icon (top right) to save and rename your template.

Yay!

You’ve learned how to customize all of the documents in the Business Power Tools dashboard!

You can always revisit this template and make further changes, save-as to as many variations as you need.

Next…

You’ll see how you can use this letter over and over to invite more advisors by just adding their contact information and fill-in a few other blanks.

Using and Saving Your Document Templates

Inserting variables is actually using the template to create the final doc.

Click on your recently saved letter template.

Click the “pen inside the box” icon to open the form field so you can fill-in your recipient and specific deal variables.

Your company “Global” variables — from your “Manage Account” screen (top black bar) will automatically appear.

You can also change or edit them here, but the changes will apply just to this document.

The variable fields you saw while editing the template will now fill-in as you enter text and numbers.

When you’re finished, click Save (“diskette” icon upper right) to finalize your document

You will be directed to Name your document

Suggestion:

Append the Name the document with the person it will be sent to:
ex: “Invite to Board of Advisors – Bob Jones

It will now be saved in the Documents section at the bottom of the dashboard tile.

The idea here is that this is your final document, it cannot be further edited.

You would need to repeat the process of entering the variables again.

You may also click the print or mail icons PRINT or EMAIL your document.
You must have your email sending credentials entered under “My Account” in the top black menu bar.

Imagine this full of completed documents, immediately accessible for your review.

And… if/when you decide to sell your company, you can give your buyer read-only access for their ‘due-diligence,’ making it much easier and faster for them to buy your company!