The idea of your business and the story of your business are yours and a template downloaded from the internet for free really won't help you get your thoughts together - they won't help you to question your assumptions - nor will they put together a persuasive case to raise funds for your idea, or to seal a business partnership. Ideally you would do all this yourself but many successful entrepreneurs are not great writers - so you you may need some help and an outsider may be able to help you or advise you.
But what you don't want is a free piece of software that makes your plan look nice. If your story was not convincing before you tried that, then it will still not be convincing afterwards either. Financiers, business angels and banks will quickly spot what does not make sense and, if you get to the stage of a meeting, will ask you about it. The pretty documentation does not matter at that stage - you need to have thought through the who, how, what, where, when and why.
So what do you do? Well you could start by buying my book - which points you to some of the questions you should be asking yourself and tells you what should be in a plan and in what order. You could follow that by having a go at writing a first draft yourself. But you are still not satisfied. That's ok, at this point there are people to ask for help. Many firms of accountants can help put together a plan and there are business advisers like me who can do so. But remember that the most important thing you will need from an outsider is actually not to write a whizzy plan for you but to ask you the hard questions so that you have the answers.
