In this article:
The LivePlan outline is highly customizable; you can add content to any portion. We offer a selection of available content you can add to your plan and create custom chapters, sections, and topics.
What are chapters, sections, and topics?
Like any detailed report, a business plan has chapters (first level), sections (second level), and topics. To see a view of your outline's structure, click on the Outline section of the Plan section:
In this view, your entire plan outline with the Chapters, Sections, and Topics will be displayed. This screenshot shows you how the parts of the outline are named, which will be helpful to know as you use the instructions below:
Note: Only topics can have text written in them. Chapters and sections exist to organize the topics, while topics contain the actual plan content.
Adding standard topics, tables, and charts
Besides the default business plan outline, LivePlan offers many additional topics, tables, and charts that may be important for certain businesses. These extra items are also very flexible; you can add them to any section of your plan outline.
To add a standard topic, table, or chart:
- In the Plan section, click Outline:
- At the top of the Available Content menu, select Topics, Charts, or Tables to choose the type of item you want:
- From the Available Content menu, click on the item you want to add to your outline and drag it to the location on the right side of the page. The change will save automatically:
Adding custom chapters, sections, and topics
In addition to the default outline in LivePlan, the software lets you create custom chapters, sections, and topics to place anywhere in the plan.
To add a custom chapter, section, or topic:
- In the Plan section, click Outline:
- At the top of the Available Content menu, select Custom:
- In the Available Content menu, click on the item you want to add to your outline and drag it to the new location, then type in the title of the new item:
- The change will save automatically.
Note: You must place a topic within a section, and you can only put a section inside a chapter. If you drag a custom topic directly under a chapter heading, LivePlan will create a section heading between them. This can create duplicate headings in your plan. To correct these, continue to Avoiding duplicate headings below.
Avoiding duplicate headings
LivePlan structures its outline on chapters, sections, and topics, as shown below.
Sometimes, you may want to make sure that a section and topic don't have the same heading. To help you with this, each topic includes a Do not print header check box. You can check it to keep the topic header from appearing in your downloaded plan.
This setting will adjust itself according to the structure of the section:
- If a section contains only one topic with the same heading as the section, the system will auto-select the Do not print header option.
- Adding a second topic to that section will automatically deselect the Do not print header option. You can always re-check the box manually.