Why you shouldn’t forget your business plan appendices
Business Plan Tips

If you have gone to all that work of creating your business plan you may well now feel satisfied that your work is done. There may be one thing that you have forgotten though- your appendices where you will keep the information to back up your marketing plan.



Your appendices should include any charts, materials, or graphs that would disrupt the flow of your business plan, but are required as evidence. You may have alluded to them in the text or only provided a small section from them; the appendices give your reader the option to appreciate these documents in full. By keep this information separate it avoids overloading your reader with too much text in the main body of the business plan; you don’t want them losing too much focus.



Sometimes you might have a lot that you feel needs to be included in the appendices and if this is the case then you may want to put them in a separate volume. This will allow you to make your marketing plan look manageable and allow you the option of using the appendices or not using it depending on your audience.

The general way of organizing your appendices will be; an introduction, marketing, operational, and finance. You should include the following in each section.



Introductory section

  • Patents or trademarks
  • The photos of your merchandise
  • A chronological review of the company history.
  • Description of your products
  • Purchase order copies
  • A chart which shows all of your historical financial statements; you will want to highlight the important figures.




Marketing section

  • A table which compares your company against its competitors; you will want things like advantages and disadvantages and how your products and services compare.
  • Some examples of your marketing material
  • Tables that can quickly be used to judge the market and show customer demographics as well as your market share.
  • Charts and tables showing your projections in regards to sales.




Operational section

  • Resumes of all your management team
  • Any articles about your management or operational issues from the business press
  • R&D reports, manuals, studies, and technical reports
  • Diagrams that show your operational and manufacturing processes. You should also have details about supplies and your work force needs.




Finance section

  • Any additional financial information that you need to supply such as projections and balance sheets.