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Top 5 Downloadable Gantt Chart Excel Templates for Effective Planning

In today’s fast-paced business environment, effective planning is crucial to stay organized and meet project deadlines. One popular tool that professionals rely on for project management is the Gantt chart. A Gantt chart provides a visual representation of project tasks, their durations, and dependencies. While there are numerous software options available for creating Gantt charts, many professionals still prefer using downloadable Excel templates. In this article, we will explore the top five downloadable Gantt chart Excel templates for effective planning.

Basic Gantt Chart Template

The Basic Gantt Chart Template is perfect for beginners who want to dive into project planning with ease. This template provides a simple layout with easy-to-use functionalities. It allows you to list your project tasks, set start and end dates, and track progress using color-coded bars. The Basic Gantt Chart Template also includes features like task dependencies and milestones to ensure smooth project execution.

Project Timeline Template

If you’re looking for a comprehensive Gantt chart template that goes beyond just task scheduling, the Project Timeline Template is an excellent choice. This template not only enables you to create a detailed schedule but also provides a visual representation of your project’s timeline. With the Project Timeline Template, you can easily track important milestones, deadlines, and critical path activities.

Agile Project Management Template

For those working in an agile environment or using agile methodologies like Scrum or Kanban, the Agile Project Management Template is a must-have tool. This template combines the flexibility of agile methodologies with the structure of traditional project management techniques. It allows you to break down your project into sprints or iterations and track progress using user stories or tasks.

Resource Planning Template

Resource management plays a significant role in successful project execution. The Resource Planning Template helps you manage your team’s workload effectively by providing insights into resource allocation across different tasks and projects. With this template, you can easily assign resources to tasks, track their availability, and ensure that your team is working at an optimal capacity.

Risk Management Template

Every project comes with its fair share of risks and uncertainties. The Risk Management Template helps you identify potential risks, assess their impacts, and develop mitigation strategies. This template allows you to document risks, assign risk owners, set risk levels, and track the progress of risk mitigation activities. By using the Risk Management Template alongside your Gantt chart, you can proactively manage risks and ensure project success.

In conclusion, downloadable Gantt chart Excel templates offer professionals a simple yet powerful way to plan and manage projects effectively. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced project manager, there is a template available to suit your specific needs. From basic task scheduling to comprehensive project timelines and resource management, these top five templates provide the necessary tools for successful project planning. So why wait? Download one of these templates today and take your project management skills to new heights.

This text was generated using a large language model, and select text has been reviewed and moderated for purposes such as readability.

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Business Plan Budget 5 Years M1 Free Excel Template

Free Excel Business Plan Budget 5 Years.

Do you need to establish an annual budget of income and expenses for 5 years?

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This excel spreadsheet is an example of how to enhance an economic budget for a 5-year Business Plan, it is a base that can be expanded with functionalities and can be combined with other budget control tools.

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20 Free Strategic Plan Templates (Excel & Cascade) 2023

There are no shortcuts to success when it comes to driving profitable business growth. It’s hard. It’s challenging. It’s a grind. But you know what makes it even harder? Lack of guidance. No direction. No accountability.

That’s why we compiled our best-of-the-best, most popular, crème de la crème strategic plan templates to help you achieve business goals faster. And they are yours—for free.   You can use these templates to make strategic plans for your business strategy, different business functions, or teams. Or you can use them as an aid in your analysis as part of the planning process.

101,347 strategy pros have already used them and added them to their strategy playbook. What are you still waiting for?

In this article, you will get:

• 20 free strategic plan templates that will help you to build a roadmap and execute it
• A quick rundown of 7 steps you shouldn't miss in strategic planning

What Is A Strategic Plan Template?

A strategic plan template is a tool that helps leaders translate business strategies into actionable steps with a clear roadmap , projects, deliverables, budgets, and owners. It provides a decision-making framework and ensures that all initiatives and resources within an organization align with the overall business strategy.

Think of it like a map that helps you navigate from point A to point B. It lays out roads and milestones to help you get to your destination, all while keeping you focused on your company goals.

In other words, a strategic business plan helps you create alignment and focus across all levels of your organization to maintain momentum and successfully execute your strategies .

And the best part is that it allows you to monitor performance in one place without having to switch between spreadsheets and disconnected systems. This simplifies identifying areas for improvement and measuring progress in real-time. With a well-integrated system, data errors are reduced, and performance analysis and strategy reporting become easier.

With the right template, you’ll be able to keep your team (or teams) on track and identify red flags before it's too late.

20 Strategic Plan Templates To Turn Your Goals Into Action

Success doesn't follow a set path—that's why this article gives you multiple strategic planning templates. Each is for a specific use case or team within your organization. Plus, you can pick between Cascade or Excel version—whichever works best for you.

1. Strategic Planning Template

If you're tired of using complicated spreadsheets for strategic planning, you’ll love the Strategic Planning Template —Cascade version!

This Cascade template offers you a better way than Excel and other static tools. It’s packed with pre-filled examples and features that will help you create a clear roadmap with timelines, KPIs, goals, and owners. You’ll be able to bring in your team and collaborate to transform goals into results faster than ever.

And there’s more! 👀

You’ll also get access to additional features like Dashboards , Timeline View, and Strategy Maps . This will help you pinpoint performance at any given moment and track progress so you can take corrective action before it’s too late.

You’ll be able to plan, execute , measure, and adapt your strategic plan in one place. You can even create multiple strategic plans and link them together so you have full visibility into performance.

Looking for a way to save time and automate your reports?

Cascade makes it easy for you with powerful Reports . With this template, you’ll get access to integrations that will help you automatically track key performance metrics and pull data into reports that can be easily customized to fit your target audience's needs.

How to use this template?

Start by filling out the objectives, goals, and KPIs, and start executing your plan right away!

💡Best for: This is a general, pre-filled strategic planning template, so you can use it as inspiration and set your own strategic goals. It’s suitable for outcome-oriented teams at any level of organization, regardless of industry or company size.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Strategic Planning Template (Cascade version).

2. Strategic Plan Template (Excel)

Not feeling ready to elevate your strategic planning and execution to the next level?

Our simple Strategic Plan Template in an Excel spreadsheet will help you fill out key elements of a strategic plan, including the vision statement, strategic objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs). With this template, you can also add an executive summary and create a one-page strategic plan that you can quickly share with your team or leadership.

Download your Excel template here.

However, Excel isn’t the best way to create a strategic plan . Here’s why:

• You usually end up with multiple strategic planning documents that are difficult to align and track in real-time.
• When you are using manual methods, using spreadsheets to track performance, you run the risk of errors.
• You spend too much time collecting data and pinging your team members to collect the latest information on progress.

Excel is a great starting point for strategic planning, but you should consider the Excel alternative to streamline strategic planning and execution— Cascade , the strategy execution platform designed for teams of all sizes.

“ Cascade provides a readily accessible platform for hosting our strategy and enables us to generate live updates at the push of a button. It has increased transparency and accountability for our Strategic Priorities and has allowed us to remove silo working and improve alignment . The real game changer from my perspective is the reporting function. Cascade has turned a labor-intensive manual process into something which can be completed in minutes . ” - Enterprise user, Source: G2 review .

3. Business Strategy Template

Like the general strategic planning template above, the Business Strategy Template is loaded with features that will help you achieve business goals faster.

You’ll be able to set your organization’s strategic direction, long-term goals, business objectives, and KPIs to measure progress.

This business plan template will help you communicate business priorities, break down siloed teams, and gain real-time visibility into what’s happening across the business.

💡Best for: This is a pre-filled business strategy template, so you can use it as inspiration and streamline your business planning process. It can be used by leadership teams in organizations of any size, including enterprises and startups.

👉 Click here to get your Business Strategy Template.

4. Operations Plan Template

Operations are the core engine of an organization’s performance. With this Operational Plan Template , you'll be able to plan your company's operational strategy in a way that helps your employees maximize the resources you have and gain a competitive edge.

You can build a high-level strategic plan for your operations or set goals for each of your departments. This will help you keep your teams accountable for progress and have visibility into what’s happening in your key areas.

By using Reports , you can build tailored progress reports and provide up-to-date information to your executive team at any time. This will help you save time, ensure accuracy, and build trust with your board by giving them insights into the company’s performance.

On top of that, you can link your operational plan template with the overarching business strategy. This will help you stay aligned with business goals, and your teams will have the needed context to make aligned decisions on a daily basis.

💡Best for: Chief operating officers (COOs) and operations teams that need to align day-to-day operations with strategic business goals and ensure they deliver on performance.

👉 Click here to get your free Operational Plan Template.

5. Human Resources Plan Template

A strong HR Strategic Plan Template is very helpful not only in the hiring process but also in defining the workplace culture and the types of people your organization wants to work with. With this template, you can set KPIs and track progress toward set targets in real time.

💡Best for: Business leaders, HR managers, and HR teams that need to support business goals with a clear HR roadmap.

👉 Click here to get your free HR Strategy Template.

6. Balanced Scorecard Template

A balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategic planning tool that helps organizations track, monitor, and execute their business strategy.

This template will help you set goals, KPIs, and projects for each of the four perspectives within the balanced scorecard framework.

You’ll also get access to Dashboards where you can set up real-time dashboards to monitor progress within each perspective. Using the Cascade template, you will have a complete view of your balanced scorecard in one place.

💡Best for: Strategy teams, business leaders, and managers that are using a balanced scorecard methodology in their organizations.

👉 Click here to get your Balanced Scorecard Template.

7. OKR Template (Excel)

In recent years, OKRs have become one of the most popular performance management frameworks. Some are raving fans, and others cringe at their mention. If you fall into the first category, here's the OKR template that'll help you set and meet your OKRs.

You can use it to set OKRs at a company, team, or individual level.

💡Best for: Business and team leaders who are already familiar with the OKR framework and want to track performance.

👉 Read more and grab your OKR Template here.

8. Digital Transformation Plan Template

A digital transformation goes beyond implementing digital tools in your processes. It requires an organization-wide shift. This Digital Transformation Strategic Planning Template will help you build a digital transformation plan that takes into account all areas of your organization that need to change.

You'll be able to define focus areas, set clear goals, KPIs, and projects, which are all needed for a successful transformation.

Digital transformation is the responsibility of the whole organization. Using this template, you’ll make sure your team has the context and the right information so they can help you implement digital transformation initiatives across the organization.

Another key benefit of this template is that you’ll have all the data centralized in one place. This will help you make informed decisions and keep your digital transformation strategy from failing.

And yes, you can connect it with your favorite business tools , including Power BI, Tableau, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Microsoft Outlook.

💡Best for: Leadership, CIOs, transformation managers , and teams responsible for developing a digital transformation roadmap and implementing initiatives across the organization.

👉 Click here to get your Digital Transformation Strategic Planning Template.

9. IT Strategy Template

This Cascade IT Strategic Plan Template will help you outline your bold initiatives to transform, modernize, and optimize your IT landscape. Bring in your IT team and collaborate on shared goals.

Also, you'll be able to link your IT strategic plan to your business strategy and ensure the executive team understands how IT projects help achieve business goals. You’ll be able to demonstrate the interdependencies across IT initiatives that impact financial performance.

This template will help you prioritize key IT initiatives to support business outcomes and keep track of progress.  

💡Best for: CTOs, CIOs, IT directors, and IT teams that are responsible for IT strategic planning and implementation.

👉 Click here to get your free IT Strategic Plan Template.

10. Change Management Plan Template

Need a template to build a change management plan that will support your business strategy? Look no further.

This Change Management Plan Template will help you define a clear timeline, action steps, and clear expectations for those who will be involved in change implementation.

💡Best for: Leaders who own the change strategy and need to make a plan and monitor key metrics associated with change initiatives.

👉 Click here to get your Change Management Template.

11. Digital Marketing Strategy Template

Build your digital marketing plan with this free template. You’ll be able to set goals, assign owners, and track the performance of key marketing metrics. This Digital Marketing Plan Template can be your living document as you scale marketing activities and serve as a North Star for your marketing team.

💡Best for: This template is designed for marketing teams aiming to expand their presence virtually and businesses aiming to go global or gain an international customer base. Digital content creators, project management teams, social media managers, digital CRM analysts, e-commerce executives, public relations specialists, and user experience specialists might also find this template useful.

👉   Click here to get your FREE Digital Marketing Strategy Template.

12. McKinsey's 3 Horizons Strategy Template

This strategic planning template is based on McKinsey’s Three Horizons Framework . It helps you organize the organization’s goals into three timeframes:

• Horizon 1: Short-term initiatives and projects that will help you achieve business goals within a few months or a year. The focus of this horizon is to maintain and defend your core business.
• Horizon 2: This horizon focuses on extending your current business models that will pay off in 2 or 3 years.
• Horizon 3: Long-term strategic initiatives and investments that will create new business models or products in 3-5 years. Or later - depending on your strategic planning cycles.

The key benefit of the Three Horizons template is that it gives you a complete picture of your three horizons. On top of that, you'll be able to update key goals and initiatives with just a few clicks. A new update will be reflected in all subgoals or project plans that are linked. If you want to outperform your rivals or merely survive in uncertain times, you must be able to quickly adapt your strategy and plans.

💡Best for: Leadership and strategy teams who are responsible for strategic planning at a company level.

👉 Click here to get your Three Horizons Strategic Plan Template.

13. Retail Strategic Plan Template

This Retail Strategic Plan Template provides an example of a corporate strategic plan for companies in the retail industry. You can use it as inspiration to develop a strategic plan for your retail business .

💡Best for: Strategy teams and business leaders within the retail industry.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Retail Strategic Plan Template.

14. SWOT Analysis Template (Excel)

A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that helps you identify the internal strengths, weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats that can impact the organization’s growth initiatives and pursuit of its goals.

You can also use it to perform a competitive analysis but you need to look at it through different lenses—from the competitor’s perspective.

💡Best for: Leadership, strategy teams, and other functional teams that are responsible for formulating strategies and strategic plans.

👉 Click here to download your SWOT Analysis Template.

15-17. Internal Analysis Toolkit

In this collection, you will find 5 different templates to help you with internal analysis, including:

• Gap Analysis Template
• McKinsey 7S Framework Template
• Core Competencies Analysis

An internal analysis is an important step before drafting a strategic plan. It will help you carry out your competitive analysis, identify your current situation, and set action plans and relevant strategic goals.

💡Best for: Leadership, strategy teams, and other stakeholders that are involved in the strategic planning process.

👉 Get your internal analysis toolkit here.

18. VRIO Strategy Template

What’s the point of analysis if you don't use those insights to solve your business problem?

VRIO analysis helps you look at your resources and skills to see where your business is lacking. This is important if you want your business to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

Once you’ve found your gaps, you need to make a plan and set goals that will help you develop the missing resources and capabilities.

This VRIO Strategy Template will help you set clear strategic objectives, assign KPIs, and monitor performance so you can gain a competitive advantage and a market leadership position.

💡 Best for: Strategy teams, COOs, and portfolio managers who are in charge of business development and business strategic planning.

👉 Click here to get your free VRIO Strategy Template.

19. Nonprofit Business Plan Template

Our Nonprofit Business Plan Template provides you with a comprehensive framework to develop a strategic plan specifically tailored to the unique needs and challenges of nonprofit endeavors. It serves as a roadmap, guiding you through the strategic planning process and ensuring that your nonprofit's initiatives are aligned with your core mission and objectives.

💡 Best for: Nonprofit leaders, board members, and teams dedicated to advancing nonprofit missions.

👉 Get your Nonprofit Business Plan Template here

20. Operating & Financial Model Template (Excel)

This template is your go-to for turning numbers into smart moves. You can establish your financial projections, automate your P&L statements, key financial and operational metrics, and even gain access to real-time automated dashboards.

With our Operating & Financial Model Template in Excel format, you'll grasp what your financial and operational metrics are really saying and act on these insights. Keeping a close eye on these key indicators will allow you to approach your planning process with clear data rooted in reality.

👉 Get your Operating & Financial Model Template here!

📚 Read our article to learn more about this template : The Ultimate Operating & Financial Model Template (Free Spreadsheet)

👀 Did you find what you were looking for? If not, you can explore our template library with 100+ strategy templates that will assist you in planning and executing your strategy. You can select between various strategic planning templates tailored for business leaders, specific departments, or industries.

5 Steps You Shouldn't Miss In The Strategic Planning Process

Here’s a short recap of each step so you know what to keep in mind before diving deep into the strategic planning process.

Step 1: Decide on your key metrics

How can you make a plan if you don’t know where you want the plan to take you?

This is the moment where you define your desired future state and align on the key metrics the whole company will need to work on to get there.

These should be no more than 4-5 and present in every strategic discussion.

💡 Pro Tip : To be able to set realistic key metrics for the future, you need to understand where you are today. Maybe you have a clear diagnosis of your current state, but if you don’t, we suggest you assess it before setting these metrics. But beware of analysis paralysis! Make a quick analysis and move.

Step 2: Choose your focus areas

Now that you know where you need to go, you can give your plan a little structure by setting focus areas. These are the areas that you’ll want to focus on to achieve those key metrics you defined in the previous step.

📚Recommended reading : Strategic Focus Areas: How To Create Them + Examples

Step 3: Define your strategic objectives

Strategic objectives are high-level statements that outline exactly what you want to accomplish by a specific deadline.

In other words, it is something that can be tangibly achieved and should contribute to achieving at least one of your strategic focus areas.

📚Recommended reading : How to Write Strategic Objectives .  

Step 4: Assign projects & set KPIs

Projects and KPIs will ensure you move forward toward achieving your strategic objectives.

Projects will determine the actions that you’ll carry out to achieve the objectives, and your KPIs will help you understand and measure the progress toward them.

Having projects and KPIs in place will provide a clear roadmap with important milestones you need to hit to get closer to achieving your key metrics.

💡 Pro Tip : KPIs are necessary for any business, whether public, private, or non-profit, so think about the KPIs that are more relevant to your organization. To make them realistic and achievable, we suggest you use the SMART methodology.

📚Recommended reading:

• How To Create Effective Projects
• How to write KPIs

Step 5: Constantly monitor and iterate

Things don’t always work out the way we plan.

Part of building your strategic plan is to monitor its progress toward the goals you set. With real-time tracking, you can quickly pinpoint those things that aren’t working and adapt fast to get back on track. That’s why strategic planning must be an iterative process .

🎁 Bonus Tip: Don’t forget your core elements—Vision Statement & Core Values

This is not a step in your strategic planning process, but it’s an important consideration.

Always remember to align your plans with the overarching core elements of your organization:

• Vision statement— your company’s North Star that guides the direction
• Mission statement —the “why” behind your company’s existence
• Core values— the behaviors you celebrate and preach as a company
• How To Write A Good Vision Statement
• How to Create Company Values

Now that you know the steps you need to effectively plan your strategy, get your FREE strategic planning template to streamline the process!

Use Cascade To Plan And Execute Your Strategy 🚀

Too often, strategies live in the minds of intellectuals, spread through the organization via a fancy PowerPoint once a quarter. In truth, this approach will never work.

Organizations today are operating on razor-thin margins, and leaders need to be able to guarantee organizational-wide alignment, real-time visibility of the progress, and accelerated decision-making to maximize efficiency.

This is where Cascade becomes your favorite business tool. Cascade is the #1 strategy execution platform that helps organizations embrace a strategy rooted in reality.

With Cascade, you get less chaos, more visibility, and faster results. By connecting your metrics, initiatives, and investments to your business performance, you’ll be able to make better decisions, faster.

Here’s what you get with Cascade:

• Streamline strategy development by simplifying complexity.
• Directly link your business data to core initiatives.
• Gain insight into the synergy of various organizational plans.
• Monitor activity interactions, log dependencies, blockers, and risks.
• Utilize dashboards and reports to assess strategic performance and share with stakeholders.
• Enjoy over 1,000 integrations with popular business tools like Teams, Jira, Airtable, Microsoft Outlook, Power BI, and more.

Streamline your strategic planning process with our tested and proven strategic plan templates .

What is the purpose of a strategic plan?

A strategic plan helps you build a roadmap to get your business or team from where it is today to where it wants to be in the future. It provides strategic clarity to all involved stakeholders, so they can make informed decisions on a daily basis.

How do you write a strategic plan?

One of the most effective ways to write your strategic plan is to choose one of the strategic planning models and follow step-by-step instructions. Read more in this in-depth overview of the 5 best strategic planning models.

What are the 7 elements of a strategic plan?

The seven elements of a corporate strategic plan are vision, values, focus areas, objectives, KPIs, projects, and initiatives . You can write a strategic plan for a team or department focusing only on five key elements—without vision and values.

Who should use a strategic planning template?

Anyone in a leadership role who needs to align their team (or teams) on specific goals, objectives, and initiatives, should use a strategic planning template. It's also helpful for anyone who needs to create a visual representation of their strategies, so they can be communicated and implemented across the organization.

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Your toolkit for strategy success.

5-Year Financial Plan Template

Whether you are already running a business, or making plans to start one up, financial planning is a vital part of ensuring your success. Not knowing your expected income and expenditure will make it difficult to plan, and hard to find investors.

This 5-Year Financial Plan spreadsheet will make it easy for you to calculate profit and loss, view your balance sheet and cash flow projections, as well as calculate any loan payments you may have. Whilst the wording on this spreadsheet is focussed around products, it can just as easily be used for businesses who largely provide services to their customers.

5-Year Financial Plan Projection

How to use Financial Plan

Model inputs.

Use the Model Inputs sheet to enter information about your business that will be used to model results seen on the other pages.

Forecasted Revenue

The forecasted revenue section allows you to estimate your revenue for 4 different products. Simply use the white boxes to enter the number of units you expect to sell, and the price you expect to sell them for, and the spreadsheet will calculate the total revenue for each product for the year. If you want to give your products names, simply type over the words "Product 1", "Product 2" etc. and these names will be carried through to the rest of the spreadsheet.

Cost of Goods Sold

Your margins are unlikely to be the same on all of your products, so the cost of goods sold allows you to enter your expected gross margin for each product into the white boxes in Column B. The spreadsheet will automatically calculate the annual cost of goods sold based on this information, along with your forecasted revenue.

Annual Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul

As the cost of annual maintenance, repair and overhaul is likely to increase each year, you will need to enter a percentage factor on your capital equipment in the white box in Column B. This will be used to calculate your operating expenses in the profit and loss sheet.

Asset Depreciation

Use the white box to enter the number of years you expect your assets to depreciate over. This may vary greatly from business to business, as assets in some sectors depreciate much more quickly than they do in others.

In most parts of the world, you will have to pay income on your earnings. Enter the annual tax rate that applies to your circumstances in the white box in Column B. If you have to pay any other taxes, these can be entered later on the Profit and Loss sheet.

Although you cannot be certain of the level of inflation, you will still need to try and plan for it when coming up with a 5-year financial plan. The International Monetary Fund provide forecasts for a number of countries, so is a good place to look if you are unsure what to enter here. Simply enter your inflation rate in the white box.

Product Price Increase

As a consumer, you are no doubt aware that the price of products goes up over time. Enter a number in the white box to show the expected annual price increase of your products to enable the spreadsheet to calculate income in future years. If you are unsure what to put here, increasing your product price in line with inflation is a good starting point. If your business is just starting out, you may be able to command higher prices for your products or services as the years go on, as you build up brand recognition and a good reputation.

The funding section allows you to enter information about your business loan. To use this section, simply fill in the three white boxes representing the amount of the loan, the annual interest rate and the term of the loan in months - for example, 12 for 1 year, 24 for 2 years, 36 for 3 years, 48 for 4 years, or 60 for a 5 year loan.

Profit and loss

This sheet calculates your profit and loss for each year over a 5 year period. The profit and loss assumptions, along with income, are automatically calculated using information entered in the model inputs sheet.

Non-Operation Income

You may have, or be expecting some income in addition to your operating income. These can be entered manually in the white cells in Column B for Year 1, Column C for Year 2 and so on. There are pre-entered categories for rental, lost income and loss (or gain) on the sale of assets, as well as an additional row where you can enter your own non-operation income.

Operating Expenses

Some parts of this are already filled in based on information you put on the Model Inputs, for example, depreciation, maintenance and interest on long-term debt. Years 2-5 are also filled in for you across all categories based on the inflation information entered in the Model Inputs sheet. You therefore only need to enter your Sales and Marketing, Insurance, Payroll and Payroll Tax, Property Taxes, Utilities, Administration Fees and any Other Expenses into the white cells in Column B for Year 1.

Non-recurring Expenses

This section is for entering any expenses that you will not be paying on an annual basis. The Unexpected Expenses row allows you to enter a contingency for unexpected expenses, whilst the Other Expenses row allows you to enter any other one off expenses you may be expecting to make, for example the purchase of new equipment part way into your 5 year plan.

Income Tax is filled in based on the information you enter into the model inputs. Depending on where your business is based, you may find yourself having to pay other taxes. These can be entered in the Other Tax row. You can rename this row by typing over the "Other Tax (specify)" text.

Balance Sheet

The annual balances for Years 1-5 are, in most cases, filled in for you, based on the information you have entered on the Model Inputs sheet and in the Initial Balance column of the Balance Sheet column itself. This makes it very easy to use.

Current Assets

This is where you can enter the value of any of your current assets, with spaces to enter information about Cash and Short-term Investments, Accounts Receivable, Inventory, Prepaid Expenses and Deferred Income Tax. At the bottom of this section is a space for you to enter any other current assets you may have that do not fall into any of these categories.

Property and Equipment

Depending on the nature of your business, you may have assets such as Buildings, Land, Capital Improvements and Machinery. Enter the value of these assets into Column B, and these values will be copied over to each of the 5 years of the plan. The depreciation information entered into the Model Inputs sheet will be used to calculate the depreciation expenses, which allows a total for property and equipment to be calculated automatically.

Other Assets

This section is for entering information on any assets that don't fit in the other sections. These could be Goodwill Payments, Deferred Income Tax, Long-term Investments, Deposits, or any Other long-term assets. Enter the information into Column B, and it will be carried across to the yearly columns automatically.

Current Liabilities

As well as assets, your business is likely to have liabilities. There are spaces to enter Accounts Payable, Accrued Expenses, Notes Payable and Short-term Debt, Capital Leases and Other current liabilities. Just leave blank any rows where you do not have any liabilities, and the totals will be calculated for you.

Your long-term debt/loan information will have already been entered in the Model Inputs sheet, so the only thing to do here is to enter any other long-term debt. Unlike much of the rest of the Balance Sheet, you can manually enter different amounts for each year, as you may, for example, be expecting to take on another loan to purchase some new equipment in Year 3 as your business expands.

Other Liabilities

Use this section to enter any liabilities not covered by the pre-defined labels. You can amend the text in Column A, in order to specify the liabilities, and then enter the cost of these liabilities in Column B.

Your business is likely to have some equity, and this can be entered into this section. You can fill out the Owner's Equity, Paid-in Capital and Preferred Equity in Column B. Your retained earnings are automatically calculated based on the Profit and Loss sheet.

Much of the information on the cash flow sheet is based on calculations in the Balance Sheet. It is important to plan your cash flow carefully, so that you know what funds you will have available to buy new stock and equipment.

Operating Activities

Much of this section is automatically filled in based on your balance sheet. There are only three rows to fill out, which are Amortization, Other Liabilities and Other Operating Cash Flow. You only need to fill out the white boxes in Column B for Year 1, as these values will automatically be carried over into subsequent years for you.

Investing Activities

Your capital expenditures and sale of fixed assets will be automatically populated if you have filled out the relevant sections of the Balance Sheet. They will be blank if they do not apply. As investing activities can vary year on year, you will need to fill out any investment activities for each of the 5 years in the appropriate columns for Acquisition of Business, and any Other Investing Cash Flow items.

Financing Activities

The long-term debt/financing row will be pre-filled based on the loan information previously entered. Use Column B to fill out your Preferred Stock, Total Cash Dividends Paid, Common Stock and Other Financing Cash Flow items for Year 1. This information will automatically carried over to Years 2-5.

Loan Payment Calculator

There is nothing to enter on this sheet, as it is for information only. Whether or not you already have a loan, or are using this spreadsheet as a part of a business plan to help you obtain one, it allows you to easily see how much you will be paying each month, showing how much you are paying off your loan, and how much you are paying in interest. This will allow you to get an idea of whether or not you can afford to borrow a bit extra, if you feel it would allow you to push your business into higher places, or whether you need to shop around for a better interest rate or adjust the loan term in order to afford the loan payments.

Related Templates

Free Business Plan Template

One of the reasons that so many small businesses fail is that they don't do the necessary up front work to create an accurate and realistic business plan. Creating a business plan doesn't guarantee success, but the process of writing a plan is critical for any successful new business. It isn't our goal to try to tell you everything you need to know about creating a business plan. Instead, our goal is to make the process easier by providing a professionally designed business plan template that you can edit easily using Word and Excel .

Business Plan Template

License : Private Use (not for distribution or resale)

Authors : Jon Wittwer and Jim Wittwer

Update (7/22/2016) : We've added a basic break-even analysis worksheet to the companion Excel workbook.

Description

This template provides a business plan outline with sample questions, tables, and a working table of contents. It was created for newer versions of Word and Excel (Office 2007 or later) so that you can easily change the fonts and color scheme and the file will be compatible with the mobile and web-based Word & Excel apps.

It is best to use Excel for financial statements, data tables and charts. So, we have provided a companion Excel workbook with these sample financial statements and other tables and graphs that you can copy and paste into your Word document.

The companion workbook combines many of the different spreadsheets you can find on Vertex42.com, but customized specifically for inclusion in a business plan.

Using the Business Plan Template

Editing headings and table of contents.

Word allows you to assign format Styles to text and paragraphs, and we've designed the template to use these Styles for defining headings, sub-headings, and figure captions.

If you want to add a new section so that the Table of Contents updates correctly, just add a new heading in the body of the document and assign it the Heading 1 or Heading 2 style.

To update the Table of Contents, go to the References tab and within the Table of Contents group of buttons, click on Update Table and then "Update entire table."

Copy/Paste From Excel to Word

For simple tables, you can use Copy/Paste (Ctrl+c / Ctrl+v) to copy a table from Excel to Word. This will typically paste the data as a formatted and editable table in Word, though none of the formulas will be functional within Word (and the table will not be linked to Excel). If you don't want the table to be editable in Word, you can "Paste as a Picture" using Paste Special or by choosing the "Picture" option when you right-click in Word to paste the table.

Important : When you paste a chart object into your business plan, make sure to "Paste as a Picture" because pasting the chart as an embedded object means that the entire spreadsheet becomes embedded in your Word document (even though what you see is only the chart).

If you want to insert a table into Word as a "Linked Object" so that when you edit Excel, the table in Word will update automatically, you may have a more difficult time preserving the formatting of the original. However, at the least the entire spreadsheet won't be embedded within your business plan Word document.

More Related Templates

Resources for Writing a Business Plan

• Write Your Business Plan at SBA.gov - Anybody starting a business should become familiar with the SBA (small business association). SBA.gov also has an online tool for creating a business plan .
• YouTube: How to Write a Business Plan - Business Wales (3 minutes) - This video offers a quick overview and tips for the essential parts of a business plan.
• YouTube: How to Write a Business Plan - Berkeley-Haas (71 minutes) - This presentation offers both the venture capitalist and entrepreneur perspective on how to write a business plan that can successfully attract funding.
• Write Your Business Plan at Entrepreneur.com - A book written by the staff of a company that should know what they are talking about.
• Sample Business Plans at bplans.com - Finding a business plan for similar businesses in your industry is a great way to get ideas for what to include in your plan. This site is a great resource for not only finding sample plans, but also for creating a business plan online using their step-by-step approach.

Other Free Business Plan Templates

• Business Planning Template Gallery at SCORE.org - This nonprofit organization (supported by the SBA) has provided expertise and free mentorship for millions of small business owners. They also have a useful collection of templates.
• Develop Your Business Plan at business.gov.au - This Australian Government site provides a really good business plan template for Word, including a detailed guide, questions to answer, and sample financial statements.

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5 Year Business Plan Templates

Plan for Your Life and Business Success With Template.net’s Free Sample 5-Year and 3-Year Plans for Small Businesses, Personal Goal Setting Plans, Business Proposals, and More. Our 5 Year Business Plan Templates Include Simple Five Year Timeline Plans to Help You Organize Your Personal and Business Life Better. Get Organized With Template.net and Gear Up for Success.

Get Access to All 5 Year Business Plan Templates

Are you planning to start your own business soon and have no idea where to start? Business planning can be quite overwhelming but a comprehensive business plan can make it manageable. Today, various businesses are springing out everywhere offering different products and services to different target markets. Business owners see to it that they offer something new to the public.

To achieve this, a business plan must be comprehensible, keeping a close eye on big and small details. A business plan is a document that outlines the goal, strategies, action plan, timeline, and schedule of the business. This document helps in ensuring that the maximum business goal is achieved in a certain time frame. Business plans need to be achievable and sustainable allowing each stakeholder to contribute. Different businesses also have different preferences and schedules that they want to follow. And, one concrete example is a 5 Year Business Plan that is commonly used in Small Businesses and start-ups.  

Make good quality plans through template.net’s 5 Year Business Plan Templates available in multiple digital formats. Each template is professionally made to guarantee quality and credibility. These templates are easily editable, conveniently customizable, and printable allowing simple work for businesses. For ease of use, these templates are already equipped with sample elements needed for a business plan such as executive summary, a quick background of the company, product or service, target market, competition, SWOT analysis, marketing plan, operational plan, action plan, timeline. projected balance sheet and the team behind. 

Get these downloadable business templates now! Avail of our subscription plans to use the best document, marketing, social media, trending, design, and education templates available on the internet.   

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• 5 Year Plan

5-Year Plan Template

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A 5-year plan is a long-term strategic roadmap for reaching specific goals. It describes where you are now, what your objectives are and how you plan to achieve them. Whether your goals for the next five years are to carry out a complex project or grow your business and start exciting new projects, a 5-year plan helps you gain insight, communicate your vision and effectively run your initiatives.

Why you should have a 5-year plan

Creating a 5-year business plan can be challenging because it requires a lot of research, forecasting, and strategic thinking. But does it pay off? Let’s figure it out while going through the things that a 5-year plan can improve:

1. Communicate vision and goals

Built as a clear and specific roadmap for the company's future, a 5-year plan helps you share your vision with your team and clients by describing your long-term objectives and the key elements of your strategy.

2. Monitor progress

You can use a 5-year plan to measure your company’s progress, which helps identify areas for improvement and opportunities for growth. It also promotes focusing on long-term objectives.

3. Enable strategic planning and policies

5-year plans help forecasting and improving strategy when making decisions. For instance, you can make strategic hiring decisions and adjust responsibilities among teams per forecast and estimated needs. Or redirect financial resources according to the assessed priorities.

4. Guide important decisions

A long-term plan clarifies business priorities and states the strategic objectives that will be the reference point during the decision-making process.

5. Build confidence and engagement among stakeholders

You’ve made a list of your business goals, but how do you think that your company can achieve them? What’s your plan to get there? Such questions are on the minds of your investors, your customers, and your employees. A long-term plan shows stakeholders why you exist, where you plan to go, how you intend to get there, and the impact of their voice on the decision-making process.

6. Attract potential investors (especially for start-up companies)

A 5-year plan is essential for both existing and potential investors. A well-written plan addresses investors’ top concerns and reassures them that your company is headed in the right direction to make a profit.

To help you set a clear direction to your plans and kickstart your business planning, this page offers you a free, downloadable 5-year plan timeline template and information on how to use this type of visual.

What should be included in a 5-year plan?

A well-thought-out 5-year plan used for business purposes is a well-rounded document or presentation that typically includes the following key sections:

• Executive summary – summarizing all the sections of your plan;
• Elevator pitch – a brief description of your business to clearly articulate it to important stakeholders;
• Mission statement – at an internal level, it helps employees align their efforts with the company’s overall goal; externally, it inspires third parties (investors, customers, partners) to take the actions you want and support you;
• SWOT analysis – helping you determine the best opportunities to pursue, and identify the areas which must be developed to improve your company;
• List of specific short- and long-term strategic goals – clearly outlining the trajectory your company needs to follow;
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) – metrics that indicate how your business is performing and what needs to be adjusted;
• Target customers – identifying the wants and needs of your target customer groups will guide your marketing efforts;
• Industry analysis – helping you identify new opportunities for growth;
• Competitive analysis and advantage – defining who your key competitors are, what their strengths and weaknesses are so you can determine your current competitive advantage and ways to develop additional ones;
• Marketing plan – describing methods and strategies of attracting prospects, converting them to paying customers and maximizing your lifetime customer value;
• Team – listing current team members and types of people you need to hire in the future, this section focuses on the human resources required to execute on the established goals and identified opportunities;
• Operations plan – mapping out all your initiatives and identifying each individual project that contains larger goals;
• Financial projections – assessing the potential results for each opportunity you consider pursuing;
• Timeline – illustrating the major tasks and milestones that will have an impact on your project.

How do I write a 5-year business plan?

When creating a 5-year business plan, here are the steps you need to follow:

• First, make an overall assessment of how your business is currently doing – clearly review your business mission and vision statements, your sales data and financial records; then, pinpoint your business’s strengths and weaknesses , along with the opportunities and risks that it faces in relation to the industry, economy and competition.
• State where you want your business to be in 5 years – how big do you want your business to grow? Would you like to start selling nationally? Do you want to develop your product line, expand your target market or selling channels?
• Establish a set of concrete steps to take in order to achieve your goals – start from your desired outcome and work backward to identify what you need to do to achieve them. The closer you get to today, the more details your plan of action will be.
• Decide how you will measure success – create specific and measurable goals and determine how you will measure the results (what will your KPIs be?)
• Gather all this information in a cohesive document that goes through the sections outlined above and regularly review your plan.

Using the 5-year plan timeline template

This 5-year plan timeline template was designed for professionals who need a hand to summarize long-term plans or roadmaps. It’s a quick way out when you need to prepare for an upcoming meeting with your clients or executives, or when you are prepping a business review meeting with your team.

You can use this 5-year plan timeline template to achieve the following goals:

1. Project planning

The template is structured on a well-defined timeline that includes placeholders for key milestones and tasks. Project planners and project managers can use our 5-year plan timeline template to:

- Estimate and forecast resource requirements and to define the stages, milestones and resources needed to deliver their initiatives.

- Help determine the sequence of tasks that must be accomplished by a certain time schedule, in order to achieve the objective.

2. Project tracking

As the project moves along, project managers can use the 5-year plan timeline template as a quick visual to track their progress vs. the original plan.

3. Project reporting and communication

Designed as a concise project overview, it displays the essential data on a single PowerPoint slide and is simple to understand and easy to read. This makes the five-year timeline template ideal for efficient reporting and communication.

How to customize the 5-year plan timeline template

Since the template is built directly in PowerPoint, you can easily edit it to fit the particular style guides or color schemes of your company. It is intended to replace complicated Gantt charts, Excel tables, and hard-to-follow milestone charts.

Easy automation with Office Timeline

This timeline template was created with the timeline creator from Office Timeline which helps you to automatically bring in your data into the slide with just a few clicks and keep it updated with one click.

Office Timeline is a free project planner add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint, and it integrates with tools such as Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel. This allows you to quickly import or copy/paste existing project data into PowerPoint and instantly transform it into the 5-year plan you need.

You can find detailed instructions on how to automatically populate your slides with project data from other programs on these pages from our Support Center :

How to import from Excel

How to import from Microsoft Project

How to import from Smartsheet

How to import from Wrike

Copying and pasting from Excel into Office Timeline

Frequently asked questions about 5-year planners and templates

Check out the answers to these frequently asked questions about 5-year planning:

How do you create a 5-year plan template?

To create a 5-year business plan template follow these three simple steps:

Outline the overall structure of the plan. Start by making a rough plan for each year.

Make sure that the 5-year plan includes sections for elements that are usually required in a long-term business plan, such as an executive summary, a SWOT analysis, an analysis of your market and competitors, and an estimate of your resources.

Save your template with a suggestive name so that you can easily find it. You’ll be able to re-use it whenever you need to draft a long-term plan for a new project. To do this, you’ll have to make the appropriate customizations and include relevant industry-specific information and market research, according to each project.

Why is it important to have a 5-year plan?

A 5-year business plan is important because it serves as a roadmap for the company's progress and growth. A well-crafted long-term plan can help a company to:

set long-term goals,

establish priorities,

make informed business decisions,

secure funding from investors or lenders,

identify potential opportunities for growth,

measure progress and success over time,

anticipate and prepare for changes in the market and industry.

In short, a strategic long-time plan helps you in the decisional process on the company's future. A business with a long-term business plan has an improved overall strategy and is more prepared for potential obstacles it may face.

What is a good 5-year plan for a business?

A good 5-year business plan should provide a clear description of the status of a company, an honest perspective of its future growth and realistic, achievable goals that align with the company's mission and vision.

A 5-year plan would include at the very least:

A clear and detailed description of the company's products or services, target market, and competitive landscape.

Projected financials and strategies.

A risk management plan that identifies potential risks and outlines strategies to mitigate them.

And finally, long-term planning needs flexibility. A 5-year plan would need to be reviewed and updated regularly, at least once a year, but ideally it would include several review milestones every year to ensure that the business stays on track to meet its goals. The plan should be adaptable, as the business environment may change and require adjustments.

What does a good strategic plan look like?

Strategic planning is a company’s process of defining its direction and the road to attain the intended goals. It can benefit your organization's vision and progress toward goals. Strategic planning typically means mid- to long-term goals (three to five years or longer) and differs from business planning, which typically focuses on short-term goals, such as budgeting estimations for the next quarter or year.

Simply put, a basic good strategic plan should answer these three questions:

Where is the company now?

Where is the company going? Or what are the objectives?

How is the company going to reach its objectives?

Lastly, a good strategic plan should be regularly reviewed, maintained up-to date and taken into consideration when decisions are made. For this, the document should be flexible and dynamic, adjustable to accommodate the changes that inevitably happen, especially with long-time planning.

How do you set a 5-year business goal?

To set a 5-year business goal, you first need to determine your company's mission and objectives. This is needed in order to align the goal with the company's mission and vision. Setting your business goal means that you have a clear and specific objective. It also means that you take into consideration the current market and industry analysis.

The next step is to craft a plan with specific steps to achieve the goal. A 5-year plan template like the one above can come in handy to help you kickstart your planning.

And finally, you need to find a system to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed. Changes are bound to happen when you plan on a long-term basis.

Communicating the goal and plan to stakeholders ensures that everyone is aligned and working towards the same objective. Some of the most efficient tools that you can use to this end are business plan presentations and executive summaries, enriched with suggestive and concise visuals, such as Gantt charts, timelines and roadmaps. Take a look at our timeline template gallery and find inspiration for your next presentation.

What does a 5-year strategy look like?

A typical 5-year strategy includes a mission statement, the description of the company’s defining features and status, a set of long-term goals that align with the company's vision and a plan for achieving those goals.

Business managers and project managers often resort to visual aids to create a material support of their vision that they can use to share their ideas and strategy in a suggestive and compelling way. An effective visual should bind the strategy (the “why”), the actions that need to be performed in order to achieve the goals (the “what”), and timeline for completion (the “when”).

Such complex roadmaps provide a clear overview of the strategic tasks and milestones, allow hierarchization, show prioritized effort and highlight interrelated work.

The 5-year plan template available on this page was built with the lightweight PowerPoint add-in from Office Timeline, that you can try for free for 14 days and take advantage of the full features the tens of templates that can be automatically customized and updated with just a few clicks in minutes instead of hours.

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Free 5-year plan template to organize the planning process

As a business leader, you know the decisions you make today can shape the future of the company. If you want to control that trajectory, a 5-year plan template can be a useful tool. The right template helps you organize ideas, analyze data, and prioritize the goals you want to achieve — that way, you can create a framework that informs strategic decisions and guides your company toward its ultimate growth goals.

In this article, we’ll explore the parts of a 5-year plan template and discuss how to use it in your business. Then, we’ll dive into the ways you can integrate a 5-year plan into the monday.com Work OS to create a more efficient and powerful workflow.

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What is a 5-year plan template?

A 5-year plan template is a model document that helps you map out company goals and strategies for the next 5 years. Many templates contain a variety of common sections that you can edit to reflect the goals and needs of your business:

• Executive summary: Top-level overview of your objectives and strategies
• Business description:  Mission statement, description of your products and services, and an introduction to your management or leadership team
• Market analysis: Data about your industry and target audience, trends, opportunities, and competitors
• Financial information: Historical revenue, expense data, and financial projections
• Plans and objectives: Goes into detail about your short and long-term goals and sets company priorities, discusses the goals you want to achieve, and explains the strategies and methods you’ll use

The right structure for your 5-year plan template depends on your company’s specific goals. If you’re going after investors, for example, a traditional structure can help you meet expectations. If the plan is mostly for internal use, you can be more flexible and still reap the benefits of the template.

Why use a 5-year plan template?

A 5-year business plan provides a structure to help you think strategically about your company’s plans for the next few years. Use the preexisting headers to guide your discussions and spark new ideas; you can also add new sections to tailor the content to your business. When it’s time to write, the template helps you organize ideas and format them into a usable document that can provide a slew of benefits for your business.

Guide business decisions

A 5-year plan clarifies your company’s priorities, creating a set of strategic objectives that serves as a reference point when it’s time to make decisions or evaluate opportunities. If your priority is to build brand awareness among Gen Z customers, for example, you might jump at the chance to establish a presence on the hottest new social media platform. If you’re laser-focused on building the best management team in the industry, however, it would be easy to see that your resources are better spent elsewhere.

In addition to serving as a guidepost for major strategic initiatives, your 5-year plan can inform business decisions of all sizes. Look to it when you’re:

• Making a budget
• Assessing the organizational structure
• Designing a marketing plan
• Adding or removing products and services
• Writing business policies
• Setting up a technology infrastructure

Enable strategic hiring and training

A solid 5-year plan makes it easier to anticipate upcoming personnel needs, so you can make strategic hiring decisions. If you have limited resources, the plan can also help you figure out which tasks require a full-time employee and which ones you can outsource.

Are you thinking about training your existing employees? To determine the courses and topics with the highest ROI, compare the skills and abilities of your workforce against the practical needs outlined in the 5-year plan. This process highlights skill gaps and exposes the most urgent training opportunities.

Stay focused on goals

A lot can happen in 5 years — managers come and go, market conditions shift, and unexpected events can arise out of nowhere. In the midst of all that change, a well-written 5-year plan is a constant. It keeps your team focused on the same long-term goals, regardless of turnover. This unified approach can ensure that you’re always making progress in the right direction.

Prepare for challenges

Writing a 5-year plan requires you to analyze the business and the industry. As you dig into available data, you gain a deeper understanding of your customers, operations, competitors, and the market itself. With that knowledge, you’re better positioned to anticipate potential challenges and roadblocks. Awareness is everything; it helps you spot early warning signs, so you can start preparing the company to adjust short-term goals and adapt quickly.

Build confidence among investors

If you’re thinking about seeking investments to fund business expansion, a 5-year plan is essential. A thorough, well-written document reassures investors that you’ve done your due diligence and demonstrates that your company is positioned to make a profit. A template can help you examine and analyze each part of the business systematically to ensure the plan addresses investors’ top concerns.

When you’re ready to grow, a professional 5-year plan template can help you woo investors.

What are some examples of 5-year plan templates?

No two companies have identical 5-year plans; the template that works best for your organization depends on the age of the business, the nature of your goal, and how you’re planning to utilize the plan.

Startup plan

A 5-year plan creates a roadmap to follow as you establish a startup, build an audience, and stake out a place in the industry. This type of template often contains lengthy sections about marketing, sales, and product or service development; it also tends to be heavy on research and analysis.

Growth and expansion plan

When your company has been in business for a few years, you might start to think about expanding. A 5-year plan helps you approach growth strategically; it’s a good way to identify the best opportunities and find ways to minimize risk. These plans often analyze competitors and discuss the costs and benefits of different growth options.

One-page plan

Whether you’re growing a startup or expanding an established business, a traditional 5-year plan contains a high level of detail. The one-page business plan  version provides a quick overview — it highlights the most important points of each section. Instead of explaining your market research and explaining how they inform each goal, for example, you could note the key findings and include a prioritized list of goals.

5-year plan template on monday.com

Whether you’re creating a plan for an arts nonprofit or an engineering firm, the 5-Year Plan Template on monday.com can help you navigate the process. A color-coded header system enables you to organize and identify top-level sections. Within each one, you can add descriptions and build out a list of objectives, goals, manager profiles, financial projections, and other details.

The monday.com template adds an extra level of detail and functionality to your 5-year plan. For each item in a section, you can add a variety of columns that track the status of a project, identify relevant team members, designate a timeline, or set a budget. You can even add a column that links critical files to ensure easy access for all of your stakeholders. When you start working toward the goals in your plan, monday.com offers different Board Views , project management tools, and automations to streamline your workflow. Your template also integrates seamlessly with Work OS, an open platform that enables you to create and customize the tools you need to monitor and run your business.

A 5-year plan is just one of the documents you need to map out and execute a long-term business strategy. The template library at monday.com includes a variety of options to help manage your company’s growth and development.

Related templates on monday.com

Marketing plan.

If marketing plays a role in your 5-year plan, consider integrating the Marketing Plan Template  into your strategic planning sessions. With sections for different projects and columns that enable you to assign tasks and monitor progress, it can also serve as a project management tool.

Recruitment process

Manage the hiring goals in your 5-year plan with the help of the Recruitment Process Template . It tracks each applicant through the different stages of the process and enables you to track referral sources to inform your job-posting strategy. Status reports for interviews and hiring decisions ensure efficient communication between departments.

Frequently asked questions

What is a 5-year plan.

A 5-year plan is a document that outlines your company’s goals and strategies for the upcoming years. It also provides information to support the plan, such as a market analysis and financial projections.

What should I include in a 5-year plan?

When you’re writing a 5-year plan, include an executive summary, a description of the business, and an analysis of the market, company finances , competitors, and customers. Follow that up with a section that lays out the goals, objectives, and strategies your company will pursue over the next 5 years.

What are 5-year goals examples?

Examples of 5-year goals might include developing new products, expanding to a new location, or reaching new audience segments. You might also set internal goals, such as improving the company culture or building the most talented workforce in the industry.

Using the 5-year plan template for sustainable growth

As you navigate the strategic-planning process, a 5-year plan template can help organize your ideas and set thoughtful, research-backed goals. You’ll emerge with a document that guides business decisions and unites employees around a common purpose. With monday.com, you can incorporate the 5-year plan template into your Work OS to manage projects, set smaller goals, and track progress toward your high-level objectives.

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