» Palo Alto Business Plan Pro 2007 [OLD VERSION]

Palo Alto Business Plan Pro 2007 [OLD VERSION] Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good For Business
Comment: I have enjoyed the product for many years and as always they have created a great product and upgrade...also appreciate the added in box perks...helps with many subjects; marketing.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Be careful with Vista
Comment: BPP 2006 ran fine on xp for me. I transferred it to my new laptop with vista and could not run it. when I tried to start it, the message "unexpected error, quitting" kept coming up. I decided it wasn't ready for vista so I upgraded to 2007. Same problem. I spent a day with tech support through email trying to fix it. I "repaired" it through control panel, uninstalled and reinstalled, ran as an administrator, updated windows, ran spybot and ad-aware. At least four clean installs and twice I ran Palo Alto's diagnostic program.

It still doesn't work. Maybe it's my machine but I don't think so - I've never had that error message before and I run everything from Word to Photoshop to Vegas 7 video editing. So - try it before you buy it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good software
Comment: This is a great program that could make anyone look like a genuis business-plan writer. I did not have any problems with it crashing at all. I would say that before using, you might want to do a lot of research on your business and also have some knowledge of how the financial statements work. For startup businesses, you want to have an estimate on all your expenses, the cash you would need, your maket analysis, and for existing businesses the same plus your current expenses and revunues.

What worked for me was also saving a lot of the information as I went along. The software is lengthy, but there is a way to delete those extras that you don't want on there. What's great about it is that you just put in your estimated numbers and it does all the math for you and all the graphs as well. I strongly recommend. However, for someone just starting their first business and who have not been familiar with these documents and procedures, it might be challenging. One good thing though, is that it gives you examples that you can take from so you're not doing it alone at all.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A nice package
Comment: The program is interesting, but you really need to check out the books to make it work. The book The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki is very helpful.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: On the technical side it is weak... on the business side it is hard to ask for more...
Comment: Over all this software is very good.

The software does crash. But not as often as other reviews make it appear. Also, I had to download the latest update manually because it couldn't auto-magically figure out my internet connection is persistent.

My experience with this can be summed up easily. It is easy to use, when you have a question or you are at a loss, the answer is already on the screen or one click away.

This software was obviously designed with end users in mind. It has a simple layout and it just couldn't be easier to use in my opinion.

The reports look professional and clean. I find it hard to believe others were complaining about the final reports. If the reports generated aren't clean and/or professional enough, I would have to say someone is living in a fantasy world. No banker, angel, or VC wants to see animated gifs or pinstripes on a business plan. Please get a grip on reality before you attempt to start a business!

All the numbers are integrated and calculated so they are consistent across the entire business plan. If you had to do that manually you would be screwed every time you made a revision to a single entry. You would have to find where that entry was calculated across your entire plan and make the changes everywhere... This feature ALONE is worth the price of admission!

The software comes with two books also. No, not user manuals. Books that help you understand more about starting a business and how to plan appropriately.

I can see why this is highly recommended. I will recommend it to anyone who is serious about starting a business and wants to validate their assumptions or get funding.

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