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18 Must-Have Best Planners for Entrepreneurs (2024)

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Last Updated on June 21, 2024

Looking for the best planners for entrepreneurs to make your 2024 business year the most organized yet? This list is packed full of planners to fit any business owner’s busy lifestyle!

As a busy entrepreneur, you know it’s an absolute must to have proper planning tools. Having the right planner can make or break your productivity, so it’s important to choose the BEST planner that’s most tailored to your needs and lifestyle.

But there are SO many planners out there, so how can you know which one is best for you?! 

Don’t fret, I’ve compiled this list of the best planners for entrepreneurs in 2024 so you can sort through them all in one place! It’s a one-stop-shop over here!

I’m including the best daily planners, weekly planners, business planners for professionals, and productivity/goal setting planners for entrepreneurs! Of all the options, you’re sure to find the planner that’s the perfect fit.

Table of Contents

Top 3 Business Planner Picks

• 2024 Business Digital Planner Bundle – Best Work/Business Planner
• Clever Fox PRO Undated Planner – Best Weekly Planner
• 2024 Daily Simplified Planner – Best Daily Planner

This post is all about the best planners for entrepreneurs

Different types of planners for entrepreneurs.

The best planners for entrepreneurs can come in a few different formats. Are you a pen + paper type of person? Love having everything online in one place? Want something you can print yourself on the cheap? There’s a planner for that!

Whether you need help planning how to start a business or you’re a seasoned pro, you’ve gotta have a format that works for you.

Planner Types by Format

Format and convenience are everything when you think about your day-to-day routine with your planner. Do you hate having to grab your physical planner from another room? If so, digital might be your pick. Do you feel motivated by the feeling of pen and paper? Then you may not want to miss out on a beloved physical planner! 

• Physical planners – this is your traditional planner in paper format, typically with the pages bound together. These may come with pre-printed, pre-dated pages, or undated pages so that you fill in the dates and content yourself. 
• Digital planners – If you hate having to carry something around or dislike being unable to access your planner across devices, a digital planner is perfect for you. There are many apps that sync from your phone, to your tablet, to your laptop! This can be as simple as Google Calendar, or you can purchase curated digital planners that are essentially a traditional planner in digital format. 
• Printable planners – one type of planner you may not have thought about is a printable planner. These types of planners allow more room for your own decoration and are frequently found on Etsy. You can print the pages as many times as you like, too! 

Planner Types by Layout

Many planners may be a mix of more than one of these elements, but sometimes they specialize in one layout in particular. Think about your preferences and needs when it comes to the layout and focus of your planner!

• Daily planners – Daily planners can be as general as an overview of your daily plans, goals, and priorities, or they can get as specific as planning by the hour! Think about your preferences on those as you browse the daily planners for entrepreneurs in this post. If you’re a time blocker, you’ll want the hourly. But if that’s too intense, stick with a general daily overview!
• Weekly planners – If you like to take things week by week and plan all your days out in advance, you’ll want to opt for a planner that has a focused weekly format. I find that these are best during years where I anticipate having a lot of appointments. No one likes a dreadful doctor’s appointment creeping up on them day-of!
• Dedicated business planners – yes, standard daily and weekly planners may do the job, but they don’t include the more business-specific things we need to think about to stay on top of our business. As you get more serious about your business, you’ll certainly appreciate having a wide array of business templates in your planner!
• Goal setting planners – Many generic planners have some space for jotting down your goals, but they stop there. They pay no attention to all the systems that need to be in place in order to work toward the goal! That’s why finding a planner with a detailed goal-setting focus, where you can create an action plan and stay accountable, just makes sense!

Format and layout can make or break your schedule, so choose wisely when choosing among these best planners for entrepreneurs.

Want a quick, free, one-page daily planner you can print again and again? Make sure you grab my FREE printable productive day planner below! It’s perfect to use in a pinch before you decide on the perfect planner!

Top 18 best 2024 planners for busy entrepreneurs

Don’t forget about these life changing planners for entrepreneurs! Pin ’em to come back later!

Best Daily Planners for Entrepreneurs

1. the high performance undated planner.

Starting off this list of the best planners for entrepreneurs, we’ve got a half journal, half planner, full performance agenda!

Start this undated daily planner at any time. You get to work out your day schedule alongside morning + evening mindset journal prompts to keep you focused and aware of what each day brings.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You also get daily goal boxes, weekly habit assessments, monthly project planning, and proprietary whole life balance sheets. Before you know it, you’ll be prioritizing your work/life schedule like a pro!

What’s inside:

• 2-in-1 planner with daily schedule + morning and evening journal prompts
• 60 days, undated, so you can start whenever it’s convenient for you
• Daily pages with morning mindset activities and evening review scorecard
• Weekly pages that allow you to assess your high performance habits
• Monthly Pages that help you strategically outline your long-term goals
• BONUS: you get a free online assessment to track your habits!

RELATED: Gifts for Female Business Owners: 20 Insanely Useful Things She’ll Love

2. Happy Planner Undated Wellness Planner

A very creative option, the Happy Planner has so many cute accessories, stickers, and embellishments perfect for the creative entrepreneur!

This planner is here to help you prioritize wellness in your busy entrepreneur life as you organize your year, reflect on your gratitudes, and practice mindfulness. Undated planners like this one are also perfect if you ever fall off track from your planning because you’ll never waste pages. You just fill in the dates as you go.

• Undated pages
• Unlabeled dividers with month stickers for your own labeling
• Space to write down ways you’re moving, nourishing yourself, staying motivated, and setting intentions.
• Wellness journal sections with reflections, impressions of the day, focuses, grateful moments, and the things you’re loving.

3. Simplified Planner 2024 Daily

What better way to simplify your life than to use a planner MADE for such a thing?! It’s designed minimally on purpose so that you can cut to the chase and get started planning your day the easy way. Pretty much feels the same as starting your day with a breath of fresh air!

• Space for schedule, to-do, notes and meals
• One day per page + shared weekend pages
• Full month views
• 4 notes pages in the front
• Hourly schedule from 6am to 9pm
• 4 pages of Simplified Prep-Work
• Monthly Simplicity Tips
• NEW colorful sticker sheet design
• Pocket inside the front cover

RELATED: New Month Journal Prompts for Goal Setting

4. Daily Planning Package (+ Clipboard + Pen!)

If you’re looking for the full package, this has all of your business planning needs covered! Not only do you get a detailed daily planner notepad, BUT you even get a companion weekly planner.

As if that wasn’t awesome enough… it also comes with a durable clipboard and pen! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a planner come with both a pen AND a clipboard, so this is truly a unique deal.

• 1-Year Daily Planner – 350 pages (50 tear-off pages x 7 days)
• 1-Year Weekly Planner – 50 pages (two-week break for rest!)
• Highly durable clipboard and pen, both made with vegan leather
• Undated and ready to be filled with your dreams, goals, and daily activities

RELATED: Journaling for Entrepreneurs: 40 Business Savvy Prompts

Best Weekly Planners for Entrepreneurs

5. erin condren weekly lifeplanner.

Extremely popular, the Erin Condren Weekly Planner is SO well-designed and ultra-customizable. Aims to keep you organized, reduce stress, and achieve your goals. With its many customization options, you can build the perfect planner that fits your style and schedule!

Also, the covers on these are insanely durable and built to last. I used this planner in high school and would 100% recommend it for any stage in your life, even as an adult. This is one of the best basic entrepreneur planners for 2024!

• Mini months
• Monthly quotes
• Monthly notes and productivity pages
• Dated monthly, weekly spreads
• Additional notes in the back
• Contacts page
• 4 planning sticker sheets
• 1 double-sided pocket folder
• 1 perpetual calendar
• Snap-in ruler

6. Clever Fox PRO Weekly Undated Planner

Straightforward, uncluttered, and easy to use is the Clever Fox PRO planner. I’ve had this planner for years and it never fails me! The weekly view includes everything I could ever want with daily priorities, weekly planning, goals, to-do lists, and habit tracking!

• Short and long term goal planning pages
• Productivity sections
• Undated so you don’t waste pages!
• Vision board pages
• Quarterly goals and mind map
• Monthly review sheets
• 50 dot grid pages in the back for notes

7. Ban.do Weekly Undated Planner

Okay, first things first…what business owner DOESN’T need the reminder on the front of this planner?! I am always having to remind myself that progress is more important than perfection. Anyway…

Ban.do’s planner is perfect for anyone who’s more flexible with their planning needs. They feature weekly note pages, to-do lists, and spaces for reflection. I like that you get the opportunity to think over what went well today and what could be better for tomorrow.

• Artsy cover design
• Concealed spiral
• Sticker page
• Pocket on the inside front cover
• 73 perforated weekly pages and 73 list pages
• Primary layout includes a weekly view on one page and a to-do list on the other

8. Leather 2024 Snap Planner

K, I’ll be honest, you’re going to spend a pretty penny on this planner–but that’s because of the durable full grain leather design (and if you’re on the go a lot, trust me, it’s well worth the money! Nothing worse than torn up planner corners when it’s only halfway through the year.)

This covers all your weekly, monthly, and yearly planning needs. And if you’re a list lover, you will loveee the lists and notes pages for extra checklists, projects, and reminders. This is one classy, high-end planner no doubt!

• 12 month dated calendar agenda
• Full grain durable leather
• 1-Year in Review spread and monthly goals pages for important dates, tasks, and other priorities
• Monthly calendar view and weekly agenda pages for your appointments, meetings, and to-dos
• Lists and Notes pages
• Gold foil stamping on front and back cover; covers made of black cardstock
• Can be personalized

What planners do CEOs use?

Best planners for business owners and entrepreneurs at work, 9. 2024 digital planner bundle for business owners.

This digital business planner has IT ALL! If you need an entrepreneur planner that covers your life and business from A-Z, you’ll want this. There are literally 1,000,000 digital planners in different variations to choose from (yup, you read that right, 1 MILLION!).

It’s highly customizable with 11 different weekly layouts, 8 different daily layouts, and business templates galore. It also helps promote work-life balance by including sections for wellness, fitness, and nutrition too!

Seriously, whatever your business needs are, whether you’re a small business owner or you’re growing like crazy, this will fit them!

• Many business templates like target audience, business goals, sales tracker, tax deductions, content analysis, and so much more
• Productivity, Wellness, Fitness, Nutrition & Finances sections
• Goals section linked to 8 goals pages
• Projects section linked to 8 project pages
• 50,000 stickers in Goodnotes + PNG format
• 500 cover designs

10. Ultimate Business Planner

Rather than a daily/weekly/monthly planner, this business planner takes on a slightly different approach. While it does offer daily and weekly planning and to-do lists, it also goes one step further by including sections for business branding, website building, and social media planning. One of the most comprehensive and best planners for entrepreneurs!

• Over 280 business planner printable pages
• Business planning pages
• Order forms and shipment logs
• Inventory logs
• Business finance planner
• Website building
• Blog planner
• Email planner
• Social media planner
• A year in review

11. Small Business Planner

Unlike the other two business planners and organizers from Etsy, this one is a physical planner! This offers weekly and monthly planning as well as business specifics like branding planning, social media goals, online stats, product idea pages, and more!

• Year At-A-Glance
• Quick Contacts for business-related contacts
• Branding and Demographic visioning
• Revenue chart for a quick look at your profits and expenses
• Recurring Payments tracker
• Social Media goals
• Online Stats tracking
• Events listing/stats and Supply List
• Product Price List
• Product idea pages

Best Productivity Planners for Entrepreneur Goal Setting

12. full focus planner.

This planner stands out because not only does it allow you to plan out your week (as any planner does), but it takes things a step further by helping you reflect on your week in terms of what worked and what didn’t. There is a lot of focusing on properly preparing you for the week ahead, instead of just going through the motions!

Another key feature is the “key projects” pages where you can map out all of your projects for the quarter. Very goal-oriented for sure!

• Designed with a structured achievement program
• Sections for weekly and quarterly previews
• Unique daily framework, separating your highest-leverage activities from your list of daily tasks
• Dedicated goal-setting and project planning sheets

RELATED: 65 Affirmations for Female Entrepreneurs

13. Cultivate What Matters PowerSheets Goal Planner 2024

This results-backed goal planner is organized into 90-day segments–the perfect amount of time to make progress!

This planner prides itself on intention-setting opportunities for choosing the right goals for this season in your life. It also gives you opportunities to revisit and refocus those goals throughout the year.

Before each 90-day window, you can hit the reset button by planning your best routines for the season ahead!

• Streamlined monthly and weekly planning, designed specifically to help you live more intentionally
• Dated weekly planning pages – Monday through Sunday
• Space for your to-do list, top priorities, habit tracking, and a small nudge to tend to what matters most!
• Segmented into 90-day windows with seasonal routine planning

14. BestSelf Journal Goal Setting Planner

This 13-week goal planner is backed by science and psychology, so you know you’ll see results in your productivity. Perfectly designed to better optimize your day, help you crush those goals, and overall live a more fulfilling life!

The Self Journal boasts overcoming “decision fatigue” and helps you focus on what matters most. It’s all about prioritizing your workload, building good habits, and making every day count! This is easily one of the best planners for entrepreneurs. It sets you up for true success.

• Enough pages to guide you through 13 weeks of meeting your goals
• Undated design
• Comprehensive goal-setting page
• Space for everyday bullet journaling
• Space for progress and mindfulness prompts
• Helps to develop daily goal setting and reflection practices through routine encouragement
• Gratitude and self-reflection sections
• Complete guidebook and calendar
• 13-week habit tracker for creating new healthy routines
• Provides space to journal and plan next steps to achieve your goals

15. GoGirl Planner PRO Vertical Hourly Planner

If you love time blocking, this is the planner for you! The GoGirl Planner is a weekly planner with time slots (6am – 9pm) to navigate your daily life the productive way. Also features goal planning pages for all your short and long term goals and helps you create a strategy for achieving those goals. The best perk is that it comes with budget planning pages so you can stay on top of your spending with a monthly financial analysis!

• Weekly planner with vertical time slots + monthly calendar
• Goal setting pages
• Habit tracking pages
• Budget planning sheets
• Comes with a pen holder and 280+ stickers
• Dot-grid pages at the back

16. Poketo Quarterly Goal Planner

Feeling stuck on identifying goals to set? Well, you’re in luck, because this planner has helpful prompts to get your goal ideas flowing!

This quarterly planner is undated and follows all the way through when it comes to goal setting, as you also get to plan the actions you’ll take each week that keep you on track to meet your goals! You get the perfect little game plan to hold yourself accountable for the quarter.

• Quarterly 3 month planner
• Goal setting pages that help you identify potential challenges and plans to celebrate your wins along the way
• Weekly plan that allows space to match your actions/habits to your goals
• Hourly daily layout with short journal prompts to reflect on your day

17. The Daily Grace Quarterly Planner

This quarterly devotional planner promotes spiritual guidance as you navigate your busy life. If you find it tough to manage your business and stay connected to God, this planner will serve as a powerful reminder to prioritize both, if this is your goal!

You’ll get to set quarterly, weekly, and daily goals alongside reflection questions to help you brainstorm those goals and be mindful of your spiritual habits. Includes gospel-centered affirmations to comfort and guide you. 

• Undated devotional planner
• Covers one quarter of the year/roughly 13 weeks
• Monthly spread that gears your attention toward what you wish to accomplish each month
• Weekly actions section with 5 smaller sections: meditate, journal, pray, plan, organize
• Start and end-of-quarter evaluations
• Spiritual disciplines explanation

18. The 12 Week Year Field Guide

This isn’t quite a planner so much as it is a study guide for helping you be efficient and productive. But nonetheless, it is a fantastic business tool you’ll want to have at your fingertips just for the expertise and tips alone!

This is applicable to business growth, career goals, and also just life in general!

Inside, you’ll learn how to…

• Create your own personal and business visions with step-by-step help
• Develop a rock solid 12 week plan for yourself
• Use the many exercises and templates to make your business life a little easier
• Determine a 12 week commitment system that can be applied to your business and life!

Choosing the Right Planner: What to Look For

Every business owner has different needs. When choosing that perfect planner for you out of this list of planners for entrepreneurs, there’s some key features you’ll want to consider before making a decision. Think about what is visually pleasing, what is practical, and what ticks all your boxes!

Dated vs. Undated

When looking at all the planners for entrepreneurs, do you want a planner that already has all the dates filled in for you? Or do you want to be able to pick up and leave off whenever?

Sometimes life gets chaotic and we miss a week or two in our planner. If that tends to happen to you, you may be better off with an undated planner so you don’t waste pages! But if the structure of a dated planner keeps you accountable, that may be your best bet!

The Sections Included

Maybe you want your planner to offer you more than just a calendar. You might want to track expenses, keep lists, track business ideas, brainstorm projects….the list goes on!

If you want a super comprehensive planner that has it all, it may be worth it to seek out a more specialized planner than your run-of-the-mill weekly or monthly planner.

Refillable/Insertable

Some planners allow you to pop in different inserts. This is awesome not only for the customizability, but it’s also far more sustainable, long-lasting, and eco-friendly! Rather than toss out planner after planner each year, you can keep a refillable planner alive forever.

Folders and Pockets

Does the planner feature folders and pockets throughout or in the back? You might not always need these, but they can come in handy for storing business cards, notes, and documents!

Size and Portability

As much as I love a big, large-print planner…sometimes it can get bulky and annoying to carry around.

Especially when it doesn’t fit in my bag! So size and the ability to carry the planner from place to place is definitely something to think about.

If a planner is only going to make your bag that much heavier, it might get old real quick. Think about what will fit in your work bag or backpack and buy accordingly!

Layout Preference

I used to NEED a planner with a vertical, hour-by-hour layout. Now that I use Google Calendar for that function, I like to have my paper planner in horizontal format, where I can just bullet point-list my daily tasks like a to-do list.

Think about what you prefer and what other systems you have in place! If you like to use a digital calendar in conjunction with a paper planner, get a paper planner that offers something your digital calendar doesn’t.

Pro tip: If you’re juggling a ton of tasks, struggling to keep your life organized, AND trying to stay on track with your goals …don’t try to manage your schedule by yourself!

You need to make sure you’re optimizing your time in the best way possible. But what even is “the best way possible”?

Well, you don’t need to waste time figuring that out when the Motion app can literally do it for you.

If you’re sick of feeling like there just aren’t enough hours in the day, Motion can fix that by:

• Automated scheduling that plans your day for you – this app knows exactly how to schedule your daily tasks FOR YOU, in a way that’s most productive for you and your lifestyle.
• Handling emergencies – Motion rearranges everything automatically so that urgent pop-up tasks don’t screw up your day…or your sanity!
• Being a game-changer for ADHD – anyone with ADHD knows the agony of identifying what to prioritize. Motion takes the guesswork out of time management, so you know exactly what to do next!

Motion is the game-changer your schedule has been begging for, so why not give it a shot and lighten your load?

Did these planners for entrepreneurs help you identify the best planner for you?

Whether you’re into goal setting, have a crazy chaotic work schedule, or just want a no-frills simple planner…this list has something for every entrepreneur! From artsy to minimalistic and everything in between, these planners for entrepreneurs offer a huge set of tools to organize your year and make it the best one yet.

Hopefully, your preferences have become a little clearer after weighing all the different variations planners can offer! Because we all know how good it feels to open a fresh new planner that has exactly what we want.

Happy planning!

Don’t forget your FREE productive day planner printable!

More Helpful Tools for Entrepreneurs

Gifts for Female Business Owners: 20 Insanely Useful Things She’ll Love

New Month Journal Prompts for Goal Setting

Journaling for Entrepreneurs: 40 Business Savvy Prompts

65 Affirmations for Female Entrepreneurs

LIKE THESE PLANNERS FOR ENTREPRENEURS? PIN THEM FOR LATER!

Founder & Content Strategist

Hey there! I'm Alexa, and I'm a self-care enthusiast and mental health advocate. At Ambitiously Alexa, I'm here to support women like you who are on a mission to achieve allll the things they're passionate about and make time for self care. I make this balance possible through journal prompts, positive affirmations, and self care ideas you'll love! Here's more about me, including my B.A in Psychology...

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The 24 best planners of 2024, from stylish daily diaries to annual agendas

Start the year with the perfect tools for productivity and organization. The best planner keeps your schedule, deadlines,  goals, and thoughts organized. Though no planner is one-size-fits-all, these daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly diaries allow you to chart your goals, appointments, ideas, and more all in one place. Some planners work great for strictly scheduling the hours of your day, while others work better for your long-term goal-planning success. The best planner for you comes down to personal preference in how you chart your time.

Planner styles get even more detailed, and we break down the ways to choose what's right for you at the end of this guide. We spoke with two stationery store owners and a productivity expert to get their advice on how to pick a planner.

"There are lots of different, great planners, and it just kind of depends on thinking about how you want to plan your week and how you want to visualize your week," said Jeremy Crown, who co-owns Little Otsu , a paper store in Portland, Oregon. Whatever style of planner you prefer, we've covered the basics of the best of what's out there.

Daily planners

For more detailed planning, daily planners offer hourly breakdowns of your day. Daily planners are one of the most popular formats. They tend to be bulkier than weekly or monthly planners but offer the most flexibility. These are ideal for students, teachers, and parents who need to keep careful track of a busy schedule.

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Weekly planners

Weekly planners are great for a zoomed-out view of your goals and to-dos if you'd rather look at the big picture instead of the day-to-day. These planners are less detail-oriented than daily ones but will have daily space to keep track of appointments and assignments. They're ideal for scheduling everything needed to complete multiple goals over a period of time.

Monthly planners

Monthly planners are ideal for professionals or students with several projects or classes to juggle over a long period of time. Though they provide less space than daily and weekly planners, they allow for a strong overview of deadlines and key dates. They're also a great option for parents who need to keep track of doctors appointments, extra curricular activities, and events for a big family.

Yearly and quarterly planners

Yearly or quarterly planners provide the most scope for those with specific personal or business goals. For this category, we considered both big-picture goal planners and 3-month planners that really drill down into how much you can accomplish in 90 days. For the latter category, you'll find that 90-day planners often have weekly and daily pages and space to plan out the quarter. That said, they're still distinct from daily and weekly planners because they focus on achieving longer-term goals, rather than plotting out your days. 

How to choose a planner

There are an overwhelming number of planner types. Chandra Greer, who owns Greer , a stationery store in Chicago, Illinois, prioritizes stocking her store with functional, quality options, knowing they might not be the right fit for everyone. "I'm more interested in the function," she said. "Is the layout useful? Is it something that is going to withstand being your daily friend for 365 days?"

To find out what will work for you, you can start by considering what qualities are most important to you. "I think if you sort of start with, 'What is it that I want to use this for?' that gives you a good starting point," said Alexandra Cavoulacos, founder of The Muse and author of " The New Rules of Work. "

Consider daily, weekly, or monthly formats

For some people, a planner is merely a portable calendar, Cavoulacos said. Other people want to track projects and create to-do lists. The amount of detail per day will start to dictate how much space you need.

Dated or undated

There are many reasons you might decide to buy an undated calendar. "People might decide on March 28th they want a planner," said Greer. "But if a planner is dated, they're already three months through the year." 

Plus, with an undated planner, you can always pick up where you left off without wasting days' worth of paper. 

Horizontal or vertical

When someone comes into Little Otsu looking for a planner, co-owner Jeremy Crown first asks, "Are you more of a task-oriented planner?" He thinks people with detailed schedules or long to-do lists may prefer the column format of vertical layouts, while those who like making notes or doodling might prefer the horizontal layout.

Some planners also use a "dashboard" view, with a week or day on one page and the other dedicated to habit trackers, gratitude prompts, and other fill-in-the-blanks. 

Doctors, nurses, and chefs always want pocket-sized notebooks and planners, said Crown. You might want something big enough to hold your sprawling handwriting but small enough to carry around in your purse or messenger bag. 

Minimalist or full of prompts 

Planner aesthetics range from very bare-bones to packed with extras like quotes, charts, and check-ins. 

"You want your planner to inspire you," Cavoulacos said. "I do think the sort of aesthetic piece, the inspiration piece, is also something that shouldn't be forgotten," she said.  

Both Greer and Cavoulacos point out that you can add your own quotes and personalizations to even the most minimalist planner, as long as there's space. "It could become more of a person's little command center," said Greer. 

Paper quality

If paper quality is high on your list of importance, Greer suggests taking a close look at who makes a planner. 

"I definitely gravitate towards manufacturers who have a background in paper," she said, recommending several Japanese notebook or paper companies with planners such as Midori , Paperways , High Tide , and Kokuyo Jibun Techo .

Even if you're not into paper, you'll want to pay attention to the cover's material. Hardcovers will stand up to more wear and tear than softcovers. "Sometimes people will trade that durability for something that doesn't cost very much, but definitely people are expecting [their planner] to get through the whole year and not look like it was run over by a truck," Greer said. 

Binding 

It's important that planners lie flat since you're writing in them. Many are spiral-bound, but others are stitch-bound. Either will let you write on them, but you can flip one side of the book behind the other with a spiral binding. "A lot of people are kind of indifferent between spiral and stitch bound now, as long as it lies flat because that's really what they're looking for," Greer said. 

Another concern with the binding is whether it will keep the planner together for the whole year. Some glued-in pages might not hold out as well. "If you have something that's stitch-bound or spiral, it's very sturdy for the long haul," Greer said.

Why not just use a digital planner?

"I don't necessarily think a planner is for everybody, just like any particular productivity hack or tool," Cavoulacos said. There are plenty of people who prefer to keep their calendars and notes strictly digital, and getting a paper planner might not make sense for them. 

If you're on the fence, she suggests asking yourself what's attractive about a paper planner. "I think for a lot of people, it's slowing down, right?" Cavoulacos said. "It's like the lack of distraction. It's the moments to think, to cross things off — the satisfaction of crossing things off." 

For Crown, it's more personal than a phone calendar. "It's your life in a book," he said. "[By] the end of the year, you have this book that was like, this is what I did. That's something that the phone doesn't do that well." 

You can purchase logo and accolade licensing to this story here . Disclosure: Written and researched by the Insider Reviews team. We highlight products and services you might find interesting. If you buy them, we may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our partners. We may receive products free of charge from manufacturers to test. This does not drive our decision as to whether or not a product is featured or recommended. We operate independently from our advertising team. We welcome your feedback. Email us at [email protected] .

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11 Best Digital Planners for Small Businesses in 2024 (Free & Paid Options)

• November 26, 2023
• by Tom Wells

As a consultant helping small businesses embrace digital tools, I‘m often asked – "What‘s the best digital planner for my company?"

It‘s a tough question. The market is flooded with options catering to diverse needs.

To help narrow your search, I‘ve compiled this curated list of the 11 top-rated digital planners based on in-depth research into features, integrations, use cases and real user reviews.

Let‘s dive in!

Digital Planner Adoption Is Soaring

First, some stats to show the rising popularity of digital planners:

• The global digital planner market is predicted to reach $1.07 billion by 2028, expanding at a CAGR of 7.3% [Source: Verified Market Research]
• 76% of businesses say they‘ll invest more in collaborative work management tools like digital planners in 2024 [Source: Miro]
• 85% of planner users say digital formats improve their productivity over paper tools [Source: Blueline Planning Survey]

It‘s clear that digital planners are valued for boosting organization and efficiency. Now let‘s explore the top options of 2023.

Reviews of the Best Digital Planners

Trusted by over 2 million teams, Trello is a flexible project planner with Kanban-style boards, lists, and drag-and-drop cards.

Key Features

• Kanban boards
• Card sorting
• Calendar view
• Integrations (Slack, Jira, etc)
• Attachments
• Progress bars

Trello is great for agile development teams, creative agencies, marketing teams, and product launches. The visual boards keep everyone aligned on shifting priorities.

User Reviews

"We switched from spreadsheets to Trello for project management. It‘s improved team coordination and given us better visibility into what everyone is working on." – Micah, digital marketing agency owner

With stellar collaboration features and a simple, visual interface, Trello is one of the best digital planners for creative teams and agile workflows.

Asana is hugely popular for its timeline views, milestones, and project status dashboards.

• Project timelines
• Custom fields
• Workload management

Asana shines for product roadmap planning, marketing campaign management, company goal setting, and tracking team workloads.

"Asana has become mission control for our entire company. The ability to plan projects, set milestones, and view progress across portfolios is indispensable." ― Brad, founder of a 15-person startup

With robust features to visualize workflows and goals, Asana is ideal for roadmap planning and project portfolio management.

Trusted by 200,000+ teams, ClickUp offers productivity features like reminders, docs, spreadsheets, and custom views.

• Task management
• Notes and docs
• Custom views
• Time tracking

ClickUp works great for marketing agencies, corporate planning, roadmap planning, and task management.

"We switched our 15-person company to ClickUp from multiple tools. Now everyone works in one centralized place with clear task assignments." ― Wendy, digital marketing agency owner

With endless customization options, ClickUp is a versatile digital planner suited for companies seeking an all-in-one solution.

Craft offers a fresh approach to digital planning with its interactive visual canvas for managing initiatives and workflows.

• Visual canvas
• Doc block embeds

Craft‘s flexible canvas is great for strategic planning, campaign planning, product roadmaps, and laying out company goals.

"We use Craft to map out and visualize our ecommerce company‘s objectives and metrics. It‘s been invaluable for aligning our leadership team." ― Sara, founder of an ecommerce startup

With its creative canvas, Craft is perfect for strategic alignment and visualizing workflows.

5. Airtable

Airtable blends spreadsheets and databases to offer a unique take on digital planning.

• Custom databases
• Linked records across bases
• Charts and graphs
• Forms and buttons

Airtable shines for building custom planners and trackers for finances, inventory, projects, CRM, and more.

"I used Airtable to create a custom digital planner tailored to my product launch needs with trackers, checklists, and Kanban views." ― Tina, ecommerce entrepreneur

With powerful databases and customizability, Airtable empowers creating niche planners tailored to specific needs.

6. Milanote

Milanote markets itself as a tool for organizing creative projects and ideas.

• Visual boards
• Grid, table and board views
• File uploads
• Comments and mentions

Milanote is ideal for creative teams and marketing agencies to collect inspiration and ideas in one place.

"Milanote has been invaluable for our marketing projects. It‘s like having an endless digital mood board to compile inspiration and notes." ― James, marketing manager

For creative planning and building inspiration boards, Milanote is a top choice.

Notion is loved for its databases, wikis, and flexibility to manage docs and tasks.

• Database views
• Formula fields
• Integrations

Notion provides a versatile workspace for notes, docs, data, and tasks. It works well for media teams, bloggers, developers and small businesses.

"We centralized all our docs, projects, and team discussions into Notion. It‘s amazing to have everything accessible in one place." ― Sanjay, founder of a media startup

With flexible databases and wikis, Notion lets you build a customized digital hub for your business.

Coda allows you to build custom apps, docs, and wikis without coding.

• Custom apps
• Interactive docs

Coda shines for creating customized planners, trackers, wikis, handbooks, and databases.

"We used Coda to build an interactive planner with trackers and docs for our distributed team. Being able to customize it to our needs has been invaluable." ―occo, founder of a 10-person remote team

Coda empowers easy custom app creation, making it ideal for tailored planning.

9. ClickUp (Free)

ClickUp‘s forever free plan still offers many helpful features for basic planning.

For straightforward task planning without advanced features, ClickUp‘s free plan is a great option.

10. Paymo (Free)

Paymo offers a basic but solid free digital planner.

• Discussions

For simple planning needs, Paymo‘s free version strikes a nice balance of useful features.

11. Trello (Free)

Trello‘s forever free basic includes helpful digital planning functionality.

• Butler automation

For basic Kanban-style planning, Trello‘s free version is a great choice.

Key Takeaways

• Digital planners improve productivity and alignment for teams when thoughtfully chosen and adopted.
• Popular options like Trello, Asana, ClickUp and Craft offer stellar but distinct features. Align tool choice with your needs.
• Airtable and Coda empower building custom planners tailored to your workflows.
• Free basic plans from ClickUp, Paymo and Trello provide good starter digital planners.

As a consultant who assists many growing businesses, I highly recommend identifying must-have features and team needs before choosing a digital planner. The key is finding the right match, not the most expensive tool.

With a considered digital planner aligned to your workflows, your business can gain the clarity, efficiency and focus needed to hit goals and scale new heights this year.

Let me know if you need any guidance in selecting the optimal digital planner for your small business needs! I‘m always happy to share my expertise.

Home > Business > Business Startup

• 5 Best Business Plan Software and Tools in 2023 for Your Small Business

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

We are committed to sharing unbiased reviews. Some of the links on our site are from our partners who compensate us. Read our editorial guidelines and advertising disclosure .

A business plan can do a lot for your business. It can help you secure investors or other funding. It can give your company direction. It can keep your finances healthy. But, if we’re being honest, it can also be a pain to write.

Luckily, you don’t have to start from scratch or go it alone. Business plan software and services can help you craft a professional business plan, like our top choice LivePlan , which provides templates, guidance, and more.

You’ve got quite a few choices for business plan help, so we’re here to help you narrow things down. Let’s talk about the best business plan tools out there.

• LivePlan : Best overall
• BizPlanBuilder : Most user-friendly
• Wise Business Plans : Best professional service
• Business Sorter : Best for internal plans
• GoSmallBiz.com : Most extra features
• Honorable mentions

Business plan software 101

The takeaway, business plan software faq, compare the best business plan software.

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LivePlan: Best overall business plan software

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change. *With annual billing

LivePlan has been our favorite business plan software for a while now, despite the stiff competition.

There’s a lot to like about LivePlan. It has pretty much all the features you could want from your business plan software. LivePlan gives you step-by-step instructions for writing your plan, helps you create financial reports, lets you compare your business’s actual financials to your plan’s goals, and much more. And if you ever need inspiration, it includes hundreds of sample business plans that can guide your writing.

LivePlan software pricing

But the best part? You get all that (and more) at a very competitive price. (You can choose from annual, six-month, or monthly billing.) While LivePlan isn’t quite the cheapest business plan builder out there, it’s not too far off either. And if comes with a 60-day money back guarantee. So there’s no risk in trying LivePlan out for yourself.

With a great balance of features and cost, LivePlan offers the best business plan solution for most businesses.

BizPlanBuilder: Most user-friendly

Need something easy to use? BizPlanBuilder fits the bill.

BizPlanBuilder doesn’t have a flashy, modern user interface―but it does have a very clear, intuitive one. You’ll be able to see your plan’s overall structure at a glance, so you can quickly navigate from your title page to your market trend section to that paragraph on your core values. And as you write, you’ll use a text editor that looks a whole lot like the word processing programs you’re already familiar with.

BizPlanBuilder software pricing

Data effective 3/13/23. At publishing time, amounts, rates, and requirements are current but are subject to change. Offers may not be available in all areas.

BizPlanBuilder also offers lots of helpful guidance for actually writing your plan. It gives you pre-written text, in which you just have to fill in relevant details. It offers explanations for what information you need to include in each section of your plan and way. It even gives you helpful tips from experts, so you’ll have all the information you need to plan like a pro.

So if you want planning software with almost no learning curve, you’ll like BizPlanBuilder.

Wise Business Plans: Best professional service

• Custom quote

Unlike all the other companies on this list, Wise Business Plans doesn’t offer software. Instead, it offers professional business plan writing services―meaning someone does all the hard work for you.

Now, you might think that sounds expensive―and you’re probably right (you have to request a custom quote for your plan). But there’s a lot to be said for expertise, and Wise Business Plans has plenty of that. Your business plan will get written by an experienced writer (with an MBA, no less). They’ll get information from you, do their own research, and then write your plan. You get one free revision, and you can always pay for more.  

Wise Business Plans service pricing

Your end result will be a polished, entirely original business plan. (You can even get printed copies.) And best of all, you won’t have to spend your precious time working on the plan yourself. Wise Business Plans takes care of all the hard parts, and makes your business look good while doing it. Sounds like a service worth paying for, right?

Put simply, if you want the most professional business plan possible, we recommend using Wise Business Plans’s writing service.

Business Sorter: Best for internal plans

Many businesses need plans to show to people outside the company (to get financing, for example). But what if you just need a plan for internal use? In that case, we suggest Business Sorter.

Business Sorter uses a unique card-based method to help you craft the perfect business plan. (You can watch a demo video to see how it works.) You’ll plan some of the usual things, like finances and marketing. But Business Sorter also lets you make plans for specific teams and team members. It also emphasizes more internal matters, like operations, that might get overlooked in a business plan for outsiders.

Business Sorter software pricing

After you’ve made your business plan, Business Sorter also helps you stay accountable to it. You can create tasks, give them deadlines, and assign them to team members―giving you basic project management tools to make sure your business plans become business actions. (Oh, and did we mention that Business Sorter has the lowest starting prices of any software on this list?)

It all adds up to a business plan software that works great for internal planning.

GoSmallBiz: Most extra features

Want to get way more than just business planning software? Then you probably want GoSmallBiz.

See, GoSmallBiz offers business plan software as part of its service―but it’s just one part of a much bigger whole. You also get everything from discounts on legal services to a website builder to a CRM (customer relationship manager) to business document templates. And more. In other words, you get just about everything you need to get your startup off the ground.

GoSmallBiz software pricing

Don’t worry though―you still get all the business planning help you need. GoSmallBiz gives you business plan templates, step-by-step instructions, and the ability to create financial projections. And if you get stuck, GoSmallBiz will put you in touch with experts who can offer advice.

If you want business planning and much, much more, give GoSmallBiz a try.

• PlanGuru : Best financial forecasting
• EnLoop : Cheapest tool for startups

We recommend the software above for most business planning needs. Some businesses, though, might be interested in these more specialized planning software.

Honorable mention software pricing

PlanGuru: Best financial forecasting features

PlanGuru is pretty pricey compared to our other picks, but you might find its forecasting features worth paying for. It has more forecasting methods than other software (over 20) plus it lets you forecast up to 10 years.

EnLoop: Cheapest tool for startups

EnLoop doesn’t have our favorite features or interface, but it does have really, really low pricing plus a seven-day free trial. It's the most affordable software for startup business planning and still provides all the essential features like financial analysis, team collaboration, charting, and more.

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change. * With annual billing

Several of our previous favorite planning software, including BusinessPlanPro and StratPad, seem to have gone out of business.

A business plan is a written, living document that tells the story of your business and what you plan to do with it. It serves as the source of truth for you—the business owner—as well as potential partners, employees, and investors, but it also serves as a roadmap of what you want your business to be.

Why you need a business plan

While some small-business owners don’t see the point of creating a formal business plan, it can have some concrete benefits for your business. For example, one 2016 study found that business owners with written plans are more successful than those that don’t. 1

Still too vague? Then let’s get specific.

If you ever seek business funding (from, say, banks, angel investors , or venture capitalists ), you’ll have to prove that your business deserves the money you want. A formal business plan―complete with financial data and projections―gives you a professional document you can use to make your case. (In fact, most potential investors will expect you to have a business plan ready.)

Even if you’re not seeking funding right now, a business plan can help your business. A formal plan can guide your business’s direction and decision making. It can keep your business accountable (by, for example, seeing if your business meets the financial projections you included). And a formal plan offers a great way to make sure your team stays on the same page.

What to include in your business plan

Not all business plans are created equal. To make a really useful business plan, you’ll want to include a number of elements:

• Basic information about your business
• Your products/services
• Market and industry analysis
• What makes your business competitive
• Strategies and upcoming plans
• Your team (and your team’s background)
• Current financial status
• Financial and market projections
• Executive summary

Of course, you can include more or fewer elements―whatever makes sense for your business. Just make sure your business plan is comprehensive (but not overwhelming).

How business plan software can help

With so many elements to include, business plan creation can take a while. Business plan software tries to speed things up.

Most business plan software will include prompts for each section. In some cases, you can just fill in your business’s specific information, and the software will write the text for you. In other cases, the software will give you specific guidance and examples, helping you write the text yourself.

Plus, business plan software can help you stay organized. You’ll usually get intuitive menus that let you quickly flip through sections. So rather than endlessly scrolling through a long document in a word processor, you can quickly find your way around your plan. Some software even lets you drag and drop sections to reorganize your plan.

Sounds way easier than just staring at a blank page and trying to start from scratch, right?

Choosing business plan software

To find the right business plan builder for your business, you’ll want to compare features. For example, would you rather write your own text, getting prompts and advice from your software? Or would you rather go with a fill-in-the-blank method?

Likewise, think about the elements you need. If your plan will have a heavy focus on finances, you’ll want to choose business plan software with robust financial projection features. If you care more about market and competitor analysis, look for software that can help with that research.

You may also want to find business plan software that integrates with your business accounting software . Some plan builders will import data from Xero, QuickBooks, etc. to quickly generate your financial data and projections.

And of course, you’ll want to compare prices. After all, you always want to end up with software that fits your business budget.

The right business plan software can make your life easier. With LivePlan ’s wide breadth of features and online learning tools, you can’t go wrong. Plus, BizPlanBuilder 's one-time pricing makes it easy to invest while Business Sorter has a low starting cost. And if you're business is looking to grow, GoSmallBiz and Wise Business Plans will scale with you.

But of course, different companies have different needs. So shop around until you find the software that’s best for you and your business.

Now that you've got a business plan, take a look at our checklist for starting a small business.  It can help you make sure you have everything else you need to get your startup off to a good start!

Related content

• 7 Steps to Build a Successful Project Management Sales Plan
• Best Project Management Software and Tools in 2023
• 4 Cost Management Techniques for Small Businesses

Creating a business plan can take anywhere from a couple hours to several weeks. Your timeline will depend on things like the elements you choose to include, whether you use software or hire a writing service, and how much research goes into your plan.

That said, much of the business plan software out there brags that it can help you create a fairly detailed plan in a few hours. So if you’re going the software route, that can help you set your expectations.

If you want to get the most out of your business plan, you should update it on a regular basis―at least annually. That way, you can continually refer to it to inform your company’s strategies and direction.  

At the very least, you should update your business plan before you start looking for a new round of funding (whether that’s with investors or lenders).

Thanks to business plan software, you can easily write your own business plan rather than pay someone to do it for you. And in most cases, software will cost you less than a professional business plan service.

There are some times you might want to go with a service though. If time is tight, you might find that it’s worth the cost of a service. Or if you’ve got big investor meetings on the horizon, you might want the expertise and polish that a professional service can offer.

Ultimately, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether business plan software or a business plan service will work better for your company.

Methodology

We ranked business plan software and tools based on features, pricing and plans, and connections to project management and other services. The value of each plan and service, along with what it offers, was a big consideration in our rankings, and we looked to see if what was offered was useful to small businesses or just extra. The final thing we looked at was the ease of use of the software to see if it's too complex for small businesses.

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.

Sources 1. Harvard Business Review, “ Research: Writing a Business Plan Makes Your Startup More Likely to Succeed .” Accessed March 13, 2023.

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The Best Small Business Planner For Entrepreneurs in 2022

The best planner for entrepreneurs & small business owners [2022].

Running a personal or small business is hard and chaotic work! Your business is often run by just yourself or a small team of employees that handle everything – the purchasing and finances, event coordination, online sales, website design and maintenance, social media marketing, and more. A small business planner like the Busy Boss Planner can be essential to keeping yourself and your business on track.

Made just for entrepreneurs and small business owners, the spiral bound professional planner has everything you need to organize your marketing initiatives, purchasing, planning, agenda, and more.

As a business owner and blogger without a team of employees I wear a lot of hats. Everything that happens in my business flows through me – and while I love having ownership of every part of my work, it’s a lot to manage! I found early on that I was struggling to keep track of things and to organize my planning and thoughts. I love using spreadsheets and other digital resources, but I needed one central place to keep all of my planning and tracking organized so that I could later dump the data into spreadsheets without forgetting things as they happened.

To help me manage all of the details of running a business I developed the Busy Boss Business Planner, the ultimate planner for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

In this post I’m going to walk you through some of the details of the Busy Boss Planner and discuss how it can help you manage your business. Whether you’re searching for the best productivity planners to use as a self-employed contractor or planners for business owners, I think you’ll find the Busy Boss planner a helpful tool to keep your work organized and reduce your stress level!

The Busy Boss Business Planner Features

The Busy Boss professional planner features 12 months of undated weekly planner pages and monthly calendars to help you organize your business and commitments. Each month is labeled and includes a receipt pocket, purchasing template, advertising campaign tracking, social media/promotion planning pages, brainstorming sheets, and more.

Monthly goal checklists, goal progress tracking, important event reminders, and task checklists are also included in an overview for each month.

With my business I have a ton of different usernames and passwords that I can never seem to remember, even with my computer’s password saving option! Therefore, I’ve also included in the business planner notebook a login and password tracking page.

The planner also features an events and deadlines overview page to give you an easy glance at your year ahead and all of it’s important dates as you plan.

Below are all of the pages and features included in the Busy Boss Planner:

• 12 Monthly calendars (undated)
• 5 Weekly scheduling pages for each month (undated)
• A monthly list for purchases
• A monthly pocket for receipts
• Monthly pages for social media or promotion planning (with space for each day of the month)
• Monthly advertising or marketing campaign tracking
• Monthly notes and brainstorming pages
• Important event lists
• Goal checklists
• Task checklists
• Goal progress tracking
• A logins and password tracking template
• A yearly overview list for important events and deadlines

What are some of the best parts of the Busy Boss Planner?

• The vertical planner is undated so you can start using it at any point during the year and still get full use out of it until you reach the same starting month again next year!
• The approximately 5.5×7.5″ size is thick and robust with all of the Busy Boss business planner features but also fits great into a backpack, purse, or bag on the go.
• You can throw your receipts all in one place when you’re out and about and record your purchasing right away!
• You won’t have to think on the spot about what to post on your social media for the day
• You’ll be able to look back on advertising campaigns and see if they were worth the investment or not
• You won’t have to keep trying to remember all of your passwords and due dates or important events!
• You can keep yourself motivated with business goals by keeping checklists and tracking your progress
• The colorful but “no frills” design doesn’t pressure you to spend time decorating your planner, but still helps you to manage your business with style!

The Busy Boss 2022 spiral planner is the ultimate planner for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Get your business organized and start using one today!

Where can I purchase a Busy Boss Business Planner?

You can purchase a physical copy of the Busy Boss Planner to be delivered to your doorstep using this link to my mom blog shop .

If you’re looking for the best business planner for small business owners or entrepreneurs then where better to find one than from an entrepreneur and small business owner herself?

Bring order to your business and streamline your planning with a copy today.

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Small Business Planner: Best Business Planners in 2022

• by Covenant
• July 14, 2022
• 7 minute read

Table of Contents Hide

Why you need a small business planner, traditional business planners, professional note-taking systems, small business planner template, the busy boss business planner, executive summary, company overview, industry analysis, customer analysis, competitive analysis, marketing plan, operational plan, management team, financial plan, demonstrate that you understand your market and your customer, use evidence and examples to support any statements you make, make sure everything is connected by linking each strategy to your main goals, consider any risks you will face and how you will overcome them, be as clear and concise as possible and avoid waffle, presentation matters: proofreading, revising and formatting your document., small business planner faqs, what is a small business planner, how do i know the type of business planner i need, what is the best advice for writing a business plan, what should i include in my business plan.

Choosing the right small business planner for your needs requires some research.  How do you know which business planner is the best? 

It’s worth comparing factors like sections, format, and size to find one that fits your needs.  Here are the main types of business planners to consider.

If you are thinking of starting your own small business, then you should know that there are many things that you need to consider; it’s everything from knowing how much capital you’ll need, how many expenses you’ll have in the first year, how many employees you’ll need, and more.

And that’s why you’ll need to develop an organized plan to make sure you stay on top of everything that happens as you start and run your small business.  That’s why this article will teach you how to create your own small business plan that will help you.

ALSO CHECK: GENERAL LABOR: Definiti o n & Guide To Popular Jobs

What Are The Types Of Small Business Planner?

Looking for a place to keep track of your schedule, as well as your to-do list and contact information?  A traditional scheduler may qualify.  You can choose the format that suits your needs, be it a daily, weekly or monthly planner. 

You also have a wide selection of brands, each with its own design and format.  So it makes sense to compare options like Day-Timer, At-Glance and Blue Sky.

If you need to take and organize a lot of notes—during meetings or brainstorming sessions—a professional note-taking system might be just the ticket. 

Discbound planners like the TUL note systems give you the flexibility to easily add and change pages and sections, essentially making your planner your own. 

You can color-code pages, add dividers for easy organization, or add calendar pages to keep track of your schedule.

In addition to a more traditional business planner or notebook, you may also want a quick and accessible way to view your schedule for the day or week, or write down tasks that you (or your team) need to complete.

 A natural solution for this is desktop calendars or calendars that can be mounted on the wall.

ALSO CHECK: TALENT ACQUISITION MANAGER: Job Description & How To Become One

With all the options available for business planning, is a template the best place to start?  A good business plan template can help you organize your thoughts. 

It can be a guide so you don’t get stuck on a blank page trying to figure out where to start.  In addition, it can show you the general layout of a standard business plan. 

A great business plan template will also provide instructions for each step of your plan and show you what an investor-ready, SBA-approved business plan should look like.  There are tons of free businesses plan templates out there (including one you can download right here on this page). 

You can also find business plan examples specific to your industry by searching our sample business plan library.  Be careful though – there are many people who will try to charge you for a template. 

ALSO CHECK: UNLIMITED LIABILITY: Meaning, Examples & What You Need

Best Planner For Small Business in 2022

The Busy Boss Professional Planner includes 12 months of undated weekly planner pages and monthly calendars to help you organize your business and commitments. 

Each month is labeled and includes a receipt pocket, shopping template, campaign tracker, social media/promotion planning pages, brainstorming sheets, and more.

Monthly goal checklists, goal trackers, milestone reminders, and to-do checklists are also included in the overview for each month.

The planner also has an events and deadlines overview page so you can easily see the upcoming year and all its important dates while planning.

Below are all the pages and features included in the Busy Boss Planner:

• 12 month calendars (no date)
• 5 pages of weekly schedule for each month (no date)
• Shopping list
• Monthly receipt pocket
• Monthly pages for social media or promotion planning (with space for each day of the month)
• Tracking of advertising or marketing campaigns
• Monthly notes and brainstorming pages
• Monthly review for each month including:
• Lists of important events
• Goal checklists
• Goal tracking

  Login and password tracking template

  Annual review list of important events and deadlines

ALSO CHECK: Merger vs Acquisition: What You Should Know

Key Elements Of A Business Plan Format

By using the following traditional business plan format, you will be able to write a suitable business plan for your new or growing business.

An executive summary provides a brief description of your business plan, including your company’s mission statement and a description of its products and services.

This section of the business plan provides an overview of your business.  It describes your products and services and explains the unique qualifications of your business to serve your target markets.

 This section provides information about the market in which your company will compete, including market research, data on target market segments, and industry trends.

This section evaluates your customer segment(s).  It should define your target customer, convey the needs of those customers, and show how your products and services will meet those needs.

This part of your plan should identify your direct and indirect competitors, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and show your company’s competitive advantages.

A marketing plan details your sales strategy and marketing efforts to penetrate your target markets.

This section details the internal strategies for growing your business.  It describes staffing needs, milestones and processes.

 The chapter on your management team should demonstrate that your company has the necessary staff, investors, advisors and shareholders to succeed.

Your financial plan should include the projected financial performance of your business over 5 years, including your previous income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement to clearly illustrate your company’s revenue and profitability model.

The appendix supports your overall business plan and should include your full financial projections along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling (ie intellectual property documentation, financial statements, executive summary, etc.).

ALSO CHECK: BRAND MANAGEMENT: Building a Successful Brand

How To Write A Business Plan

In order for a credit assessment team to feel confident that your business plans are viable, they will want to see that there is a market that wants and needs your product/service.

They want to see that you have thought about how to differentiate yourself from the competition, and that you know how to attract customers.

 Any market research you can do, such as a simple online survey, researching industry reports, or interviewing potential customers, will help.

it’s strong statistics, customer quotes, examples of similar activities, or other research.  It doesn’t have to be detailed – sometimes it’s enough to include a link to additional information – but it will help our credit assessment team be more confident that your business plan is viable.

The purpose of a business plan is to show what your goals are and how you are going to achieve them, so be sure to put your goals at the center of your plan. 

For example, if one of your goals is to generate 10 new sales per month, then in your marketing department you will need to think about how many sales each advertising channel needs to deliver to support this goal.

Every business has risks, so don’t hesitate to mention them in your business plan.  Demonstrating that you are aware of your main risks. 

Having a clear plan on how to reduce or overcome them is what will make your business plan stand out and give our credit assessment team confidence that you are up for the challenge.

Remember, we don’t want to see every detail of how your business will work; we just need to know enough information to be sure you have a clear plan. 

You may want to use bullets, graphs, tables, and subheadings to help you focus your content and avoid the temptation to go into too much detail.

As with most things in life, first impressions count.  Use clear headings, structure your document in a clear order, and make sure you use consistent fonts.  Remember, you don’t have to be a writer or designer to produce a professional-looking document. 

Most importantly, double-check that you haven’t made any spelling or grammar mistakes.  It might be a good idea to have someone read your work for you when you’re done to pick up anything you might have missed.

While there are advantages to using a business plan template, depending on your situation, it may not be the best way to complete your plan.  There is still a lot of work to be done — for example, you need to not only fill out the financial tables, but also do all the calculations yourself. 

You also need to know enough about the process to make sure you get all the numbers in the right places.  And there are usually limited instructions to go with a free template, so unless you already know what you’re doing with numbers, the process of writing your business plan won’t be much easier with a template.

A business plan template is a document that allows you to quickly write a detailed business plan.  Among other things, it contains an introduction, a brief description, a company description and a marketing plan.

You may prefer the traditional business plan format if you are very detail-oriented, want a comprehensive plan, or plan to apply for funding from traditional sources.

When you write your business plan, you don’t have to follow its exact outline.  Instead, use the sections that best suit your business and your needs.  Traditional business plans use some combination of these nine sections.

Briefly tell the reader what your company is and why it will be successful.  Include your mission, your product or service, and basic information about your company’s leadership team, employees, and location.  You should also include financial information and high-level development plans if you plan to apply for funding.

Briefly tell the reader what your company is and why it will be successful.  Include your mission, your product or service, and basic information about your company's leadership team, employees, and location.  You should also include financial information and high-level development plans if you plan to apply for funding.

• startuploans.co.uk –  What is a Business Plan?
• bizbuildingmoms.com –  The Best Small Business Planner For Entrepreneurs in 2022

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• GENERAL LABOR: Definition & Guide To Popular Jobs
• TALENT ACQUISITION MANAGER: Job Description & How To Become One
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• Merger vs Acquisition: What You Should Know
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Behold, the Best 2022 Planners for Creators and Entrepreneurs

By Nikki Brown

Nikki Brown

Editorial Director, BlogHer

If you’re a creator, entrepreneur, small business owner, or some combination of these job titles, you’re already thinking about your starter pack for the new year. When you’re not focused on crushing those Q4 goals – like record page views for your blog, end-of-year product sales, or booked freelance services – you’re gathering everything you’ll need to start January off right. This is when having the best 2022 planner could be very helpful.

Sure, you can purchase an undated version later but seeing dates and times on paper tend to deliver motivation for actually getting things done. We’ve scoured the net for what we think are the best options for every kind of budget and timeline.

From small 18-month calendars to sets with stickers and pens, peruse this versatile list to find your 2022 match.

2022 tiny delights planner box set.

$39.95 at Paper Source

erin condren Blush A5 LifePlanner

$79 at erin condren

Leopard Print 2022 Planner

$24.99 at Papier

The Jag 2022 Pocket Planner

Big plans undated daily planner.

$28.99 at Papier

Cat Mystic Mia Charro for Blue Sky Planner

$9.99 at Target

The Happy Planner

$26.99 at Target

Festive Floral Day Designer Planner

$22.99 at Target

Clever Fox Budget Planner

$21.99 at Amazon

Moleskine Velvet Planner

$70 at Moleskine

House of Doolittle Two-Year Planner

$13.69 at Amazon

At A Glance 15-Month Planner

$15.99 at Amazon

Artfan 18-Month Planner

$28.99 at Amazon

Mochi Things Slim & Wide Weekly Planner

$26.95 at Mochi Things

Leuchtturm Weekly Planner & Notebook

$18.50 at Leuchtturm

alter planning co. The 2022 Annual Planner

$42 at Madewell

Ink+Volt 2022 Goal Planner 

$48.75 at Ink+Volt

Idlewild Co. 2022 Self-Care Calendar

$30 at Anthropologie

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13 Best Planners for Entrepreneurs to Succeed in 2022

• Entrepreneurship

Being a blogger and an entrepreneur, I appreciate how important goal setting, planning, and creativity is. That’s why I rounded up this list of the best planners for entrepreneurs in 2022!

We all realize that entrepreneurs have hectic schedules, but the lives of a professional blogger can be pretty intense, too. Particularly when you’re blogging as a business, and not just a hobby. Focus is essential, and just getting things done can be difficult if you don’t make lists that you can check, item by item. And, let’s be honest, if you do not place important to-do items on actual lists, chances are that you’ll forget about them.

Which could get you in trouble.

These days there are many digital tools available. Even so, there seems to be a trend towards using paper-based planners. Not just for the nostalgia but as an efficient tool for improved planning, goal setting , general life-organization, and creativity.

I loved reading this article – “ 4 Ways Pen and Paper Can Boost Your Work-Life Balance .” The author says that “Writing makes you more committed.” and “Jotting things down makes you happier.” Who wouldn’t want to be more committed and happier?

Generating Ideas

There are many benefits to using pen and paper as a creative tool, in addition to the apps and tools that you rely on for other things. Taking notes on paper focuses your thoughts in a way that your smart phone or computer just doesn’t.

And I think you just get better results when you write things down.

So I use notebooks a lot, not just for remembering ideas that I have, but also for developing those ideas. One idea will lead to another one, and this active brainstorming keeps on going for a while.

Being an entrepreneur, it’s vital to come up with that one idea that will set you apart. That one idea that you will bet the next few years of your life, and 150% of your energy, on. And these ideas do not always come suddenly, so you need to work them out one by one.

Have you ever heard the expression about “being one thought away from a good idea?” Well, it’s true. Sometimes, that sensational idea you have needs to be taken just a little further to become truly brilliant.

Success in business is the same thing. It is all based on great creative processes.

Well, notebooks and planners help!

Daily Planning

I love planning and feel that a project is halfway there if it has been planned and laid out properly. Paper-based notebooks and planners are essential for this, too, even though there are digital alternatives. If you have something you want to get done, sitting down with a piece of paper, and writing out your goals may help you reach them faster. And what better project to plan, than your own, fabulous life?

Want a tip? Add a few old fashioned paper-notebooks, agendas, and planners to your list of essential tools, and start using them for creative and organizational purposes. Often it is easier to reach for a notebook or planner than to switch on a tablet or a laptop.

There are notebooks in all categories, sizes, and shapes. I have a project planner that I keep at home, but also a daily planner that I carry with me. There are so many interesting, concept-driven planners that I must admit, it’s tempting to buy more than one just to try them out or to switch from one type to another each year.

Best Planners For Entrepreneurs

Here are seven fantastic planners for entrepreneurs that will improve your business and your life.

Passion Planner

Passion Planner  is a system for writing down dreams and goals, and to help you succeed in realizing them. A well thought-out concept that consists of many parts, but also a full yearly calendar with the week on two pages.

The great thing is that the focus is always on how you can implement steps that will help you reach your goals. It also delivers a weekly inspirational quote and a matching challenge. Very inspirational!

Dailygreatness Business Yearly (Undated)

Dailygreatness Business Planner is a visually stunning planner that is focused on business. But highly inspirational, and very comprehensive. It wants to help you in “forming excellent thinking habits while taking action on your most important priorities.”

There are weekly check-ins, challenges, inspirations, and week-to-a-view pages. And the planner has weekly, and quarterly goal planners, plus some cool features like the social media content planner, and the expansion strategy worksheet. Original content, well worth checking out. And a great detail is that the planner is undated, so you can start whenever you want!

Get To Work Book

The design is creative, yet discreet, and the planner offers many helpful features like project breakdown pages, reflect and goal-set pages, and 12 motivational quotes that you can detach from the planner. And there’s plenty of blank space for notes and brainstorming. A very practical and handy, no nonsense planner.

Savor Daily Action Planner

A comprehensive planner that many people love. And note that this is truly a monthly planner, meaning that each book is for 30-days, although you can also get a 90-day version. This may sound like an incentive for people to buy more than needed, but if you think about it, having a whole book for each month is a wonderful idea, and you could immerse yourself in many, monthly details.

Day Designer

This is the planner I’m currently using. I love the vertical layout, the “top 3” for each day and the extra space space for your “to do” list. I actually use this space to jot down things that I think of throughout the day so that I can stay focused on whatever I am currently doing and come back to the list at a later time.

Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map Planner

The design of the inside of the planner itself is very clean and bright, quite appealing. And the planner has plenty of goal setting pages, to-do lists, and an original focus on “my feelings,” and more spiritual concepts like “soul prompt” and “my core desired feelings.”

Moleskine Classic 12 Month 2020 Weekly Planner

High Performance Planner

The High Performance Planner  is a 2-in-1 day planner and journal based on the world’s largest study of how high performers increase productivity, set goals, prioritize projects, outperform their peers, and create the positive mindset and habits needed to win the day.

High Performance Planner Full-Year Pack

For ultimate high performance: a full year’s supply of the revolutionary  High Performance   planner-and-journal designed by the world-leading coach in high performance and backed by science–featuring calendars, writing prompts, schedules, self-assessments, and a variety of colors.

Clear Habit Journal 

A notebook based on science. A habit journal with 168 dot grid notebook pages, 12 habit trackers, and 12 one-line-per-day journal templates. Created by Baronfig in collaboration with James Clear.

Ifocus Business Planner  

The Best Productivity Planner for Entrepreneurs and Project Notebook for Business!  If Your Goal is to build a Successful Business in 2020, then You need an advanced PLANNER to manage your TIME! 

Ifocus is the BEST planner to be more productive, to plan your next project, to reach your next goal, or simply just manage your business in a smarter way.

Hatch Notebook Idea Journal

TURN YOUR IDEAS INTO REALITY: This one-of-a-kind planning notebook includes 160 pages broken down into three sections to help you structure, organize, and implement your ideas; Each section helps break down your grand ideas into realistic pieces and action items that keep you motivated and on track throughout the process of “ hatching ” your ideas! I love the Aqua color! 

Goal Crazy Undated Planner

Accomplish more, increase productivity, be happier, and track your progress. This life changing Goal Crazy guided planner & journal will give you the structure you need to achieve your goals and become a more satisfied and happier you!

Use the minimalist approach to prioritize and plan your days & weeks quickly to get more done! There are multiple colors to choose from but I think the purple is gorgeous! 

Paper vs. Digital

If you’re still not sure whether a paper planner is for you, you can take a quiz here to help you decide. 🙂

And if just you’re not sure that there is a perfect planner for you, you could always consider bullet journaling. You can read more about it here .

The most popular notebooks for bullet journaling are Leuchtturm and Moleskin, like these.

Did you find the perfect planner for you?

With these examples, you should be able to find a planner you like. I encourage you to pick one up an undated one or a new one for 2021, as a planner can be a great productivity tool for your business.

There are so many planners and goal-setting tools out there, and I would love to hear any tips that you might have. What other planners should be on this list?

Also, what is your number one tip for planning, goal setting or creativity? Leave me a comment. I’d love to know. 🙂

Have burning questions? Future blog posts you’d like to see? Just want to chat? I’d love to connect with you!

43 Responses

Nice post! I use a paper planner from Rifle Paper Co. that’s super visually pleasing and lets me combine my work and blog to-do lists by week and by month. I love it! I stopped using my phone because iCal would occasionally delete appointments, making me seem like a forgetful or unreliable person, and it was so frustrating! I love the quote about being one thought away from a great idea – such a nice one for creatives!

I had not heard of Rifle Paper Co. Thanks for sharing! Which one do you use? The classic, spiral or hardcover one?

I love the cover of the Day Designer! I’m a planneraholic so I could stare at these babies all day! This year I chose a simpler planner and I actually just recently reviewed it on my site! I also have an upcoming post about why the Emily Ley Simplified Planner Didn’t Work for Me! I thought I would love it because it has some great elements and it’s gorgeous but I just couldn’t use it! Great post!

Kaitlyn – went looking for your planner review and just saw the free holiday pictures. They are gorgeous! 🙂

Thank you! I’m glad you liked them!

OMG Chantel! This is a totally awesome post! I really love notebooks and planners, so thank you you took time to put this together. Since you asked, I think http://bulletjournal.com/ could be on this list. It’s a geat tool/system. Also, If I had to pick one favorite from the ones you listed it would be difficult, because you have the best ones there. I’m now checking out #3 Get To Work Book and #4 which I didn’t know about. Cheers, Stella

Stella – thank you for your kind words. I actually did mention bullet journaling at the very end, but I probably shouldn’t have done that in the “Paper vs. Digital section”. Thanks for pointing it out since others may have missed it too. I keep thinking it seems like such an intriguing option. I might try it at some point. 🙂

My friend swears by the Passion Planner and has been using it for years, I love all these types of notebooks but sadly being on the road all the time I always feel that they are so big and bulky and take up room with all the other ‘stuff’ I need to squeeze into a carryon. But I do carry a small notebook because nothing feels better than writing it down.

Faith – did you know that you can print out Passion Planner pages? Maybe you could carry a weeks’s worth with you? http://www.passionplanner.com/downloads/

This is a great topic! I created my own planner ironically. I got a leather empty planner and bought the other things personalized and such.

xoxo Isaly Holland http://www.memoriesbyisaly.com

That’s great, Isaly. I should have mentioned that you can certainly DIY your own custom planner. ?

I love to organize my business for success! Thank you for sharing this!

Divine CEO http://www.ladiesmakemoney.com

Being organized is something that I have to work at constantly. But I’m finding that using a planner *and* Trello is a good combination for me. ?

That get to work planner is right up my alley. It has all the space that I need to write in all my restaurant photography and reviews that need to be done. Plus, its the layout that I love. Gotta go to their site noooooow!!!!

Danielle | FollowMyGut.com <3

I’m glad you found one you like! That one was new to me when I started researching for 2017 options. ?

Goal setting and planning for a weekly content always inspires me. Thank you for such a wonderful post and a planner resources. I think I should try one of above-mentioned planners. All look so gooooood. I think your post will be helpful in writing my upcoming post about goal setting.

Thanks, Arfa! Hope you find one that is perfect for you!

I LOVE a good paper planner or notebook! I agree that writing something down feels more committing and I physically crossing things off my to-do list just makes me feel more productive. Thanks for the great round up of these!

You are most welcome, Steph. Hope you find the perfect planner for you. ?

Great round up! I just purchased the Happy Planner but have heard many good things about the ones you mentioned above. If this one doesn’t work for me I may just have to check out that Passion Planner.

I’ll have to check our the Happy Planner, Damaris. Also, did you know that you can download PDF pages of the passion planner to see if you like it? ?

Thanks for the reviews! I’ll be getting a Passion Planner 🙂

Yay! I think the Passion Planner looks awesome!!

Love them all! I’m too addicted to planners haha

I know, Sarah! I want one of each!

Thanks for the info. I must use a planner to get my life in order. I make my own and incorporate my own needs so it changes every three months or so, in design, to meet my needs. And where do I get my ideas? Other planners of course! Thanks for giving us a glimpse into these.

Margaret – I know what you mean! It is very tempting to want to make my own and combine what I like best about each of these, but… I don’t need another project on my “to do” list. 🙂

Hi Chantel, thanks so much for including my quiz about using a paper or digital planner! I hope people will find it helpful. 🙂

As far as a planning tip, I find it best to review my planner not only in the morning, but in the evening as well. It helps me better understand what took place during the day, and helps me plan for tomorrow.

Thanks again, and best wishes for a wonderful 2017!

Rashelle TheOrderExpert.com

No, thank you! It’s a great resource.

Great thoughts on planning to be unstoppable! Cheers!

Thank you for the kind words. ?

I recently invested in a Ban.Do and I love it! I cannot use my calendar on my computer as I like to use a pencil to mark up my planner, so that I can cross things off. Great round up!

Love this post. I am currently using Wonderlass’ Blog + Life Planner for my blog in 2017. I got my sister a Day Designer for her job though for Christmas and I am so excited for her to get it because it has so much space and I know she will adore it.

I’ve been wanting to try the Passion Planner – I may just have to invest in one, haha. 🙂 Thank you for sharing these!

It looks great, doesn’t it?! I still can’t decide which planner I want for myself and I’m running out of time. Leaning towards an undated one, though. ?

These are some awesome planners! I am totally a paper and many pens girl 😉

I love setting pen to paper to plan myngoals and my life. Even if I don’t constant ly refer to it, the act of writing it down helps me internalize hhings.

Great list Chantel, I always carry a notebook anywhere I go; mostly because I need to jot down ideas or plans that breeze in when I’m not really ready to go for it. It has really helped me on my blogging journey. Thanks for sharing.

I love the idea of writing things down on lovely planners, but I know I’m a digital gal all the way. Good for inspiration though!

Great encouraging post. I agree that organization is half the battle.

These are great planners. They look very well laid out. It is always good to have a way that you organize yourself for maximum productivity. Keep up the great work and live unstoppable!

I don’t even know if you are working on this blog anymore…either way, this was a very informative article on the kind of planners that creatives, entrepreneurs, goal-oriented, and seekers are looking for. I neve heard of at least half of them, so I wanted to take the time to thank you for the well written and concise information provided in this piece. Helped me to make a decision (almost, as I’m teeter-tottering between two at the moment).

Great post. A good planner can make all the difference. Scheduling is a hard thing for so many, I used to just use my phone, but one glitch and I lost so much. Paper is the way to go, less hacking and technical issues for sure. I tried a personal growth Planner and loved it, I learned so much about myself and how I function best. Thanks for the post.

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Our Favorite Paper Planners

By Jackie Reeve , Kaitlyn Wells and Melanie Pinola

You can find plenty of phone apps to help you keep track of your life, but stationery lovers know the power of writing it all down on paper.

It’s hard to beat the satisfaction of crossing something off your to-do list with a sharp pencil or a smooth pen. And unlike calendar and to-do list apps, paper planners let you color outside the lines, literally and metaphorically.

Because scheduling needs vary from person to person, and we all like to plan our time differently, we focused on planners that are customizable or offer more versatility than standard dated planners. (But we also list a few quality, straightforward monthly-and-weekly planners, in our other good planners section .)

We’ve researched 149 planners and tested 65 since 2017, and we’ve discovered that most (but not all) of the best planners cost $50 or less. There are so many good planners that we can’t recommend a single standout; instead, we’ve found six, in a range of styles, that people with different priorities will love.

These include a minimalist, undated weekly calendar , a modular traveler’s notebook , a refillable ring-bound organizer , a customizable planner with colorful pages , a planner with simultaneous monthly and weekly views , and a planner you can design yourself .

If you’re not sure which type of planner is for you, we cover how to choose the right planner . You can also see how we made our picks .

Wherever possible, we’ve chosen options that are widely available and come in different sizes, layouts, and colors.

The research

Why you should trust us, best minimalist calendar: muji recycled paper weekly planner, best compact, modular option: traveler’s company traveler’s notebook, best ring-bound planner: filofax the original organizer, best highly decorated option: erin condren lifeplanner, best planner for multitasking: laurel denise mini horizontal weekly planner, best customizable planner: agendio planner, other good planners, what about hobonichi planners, how to choose the right planner for yourself, how we picked and tested, the competition.

For advice on what to look for in a planner, and to gain insight on why paper planners are so popular in this digital age, we spoke with Shu Yao, co-founder of JetPens ; Erin Condren , creator of the hugely popular Erin Condren LifePlanner; Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Jackson Books and Goods for the Study ; and Kristin Damian, who runs the planner-sticker company Krissyanne Designs .

This guide builds on the extensive work of planner lover and senior staff writer Jackie Reeve, who also follows the online planner community: Planner enthusiasts share photos and tips for setting up their planners, decorating their planners, or using their planners for more than simple scheduling. She uses nearly half a dozen planners, from various brands, to compartmentalize and organize facets of her life.

Senior staff writer Kaitlyn Wells considers her productivity style to be “organized chaos.” After college, she found it difficult to maintain a paper planner habit, and she favors reminders scattered across her mobile device, sticky notes, and reporter’s notebooks. Still, she went into this guide excited to explore several variations on hacking one’s to-do list. She found several planners she likes, and she is confident you’ll find one you enjoy using, too.

Senior staff writer Melanie Pinola is a die-hard stationery fan who has tested and reviewed notebooks , pens , and mechanical pencils for Wirecutter since 2019. Prior to joining Wirecutter, at Lifehacker she wrote extensively about productivity topics, including planner reviews and time-management techniques. She’s always happy to discover and try a new planner or productivity system.

Muji Recycled Paper Weekly Planner

Best planner for simple scheduling.

This bare-bones planner is our most inexpensive pick. It’s a thin, cardboard-covered booklet with undated pages for each week in a year—no more, no less.

Buying Options

Why it’s great: If all you need is a slim calendar to keep track of weekly tasks and appointments, the Muji Recycled Paper Weekly Planner has a minimalist, elegant design, and it costs much less than any other pick on our list. It’s a no-frills planner with simple boxes for each day of the week on every page.

This planner is small and thin, so it fits easily in a bag, but the layout still leaves sufficient room for writing. Depending on how much you have going on, you can split each day’s wide box into sections for work and personal deadlines, or tasks and meal plans, or any other way you want to compartmentalize your days.

Because the planner is undated, you can start your year whenever you’d like, and you can skip weeks guilt-free. As the name implies, the planner is made from recycled paper.

This planner has understated, medium-gray lines and fonts that are less distracting than those in our previous slim planner pick, the Jstory Large Weekly Planner . Despite the Muji’s dollar-store price,its smooth, cream-colored paper holds up well to all types of writing instruments, including markers and fountain pens. The stapled book doesn’t lie quite flat when opened, but it comes close.

Muji also offers a monthly recycled paper planner , which you can pair with the weekly model. It’s the same size and price.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

With this planner, you’ll find no bells and whistles, like extra room for notes. Yet the Muji Recycled Paper Weekly Planner’s simplicity is part of its appeal. If you typically have a very packed schedule, you’d be better off owning a planner with a different layout or more room for each day, such as the Erin Condren LifePlanner , the Filofax The Original Organizer , or the Agendio Planner .

Size: A5, approximately 8.3 inches by 5.7 inches

Traveler’s Company Traveler’s Notebook

Best for combining a planner with different notebooks.

This planner is a cross between a simple calendar and a beautiful journal. And you can fill it with a range of inserts for any type of planning.

May be out of stock

Traveler’s Company Traveler’s Notebook, Passport Size

Best pocket-size modular planner.

This more-compact version can fit in large pockets or small bags.

Why it’s great: Of all the planners we considered, the Traveler’s Company Traveler’s Notebook was the most popular with our testers. The simple leather folio holds thin notebooks inside (secured with an elastic band), and you can invest in whatever notebook inserts fit your planning needs. There are over a dozen options for inserts on the company’s site as well as on Amazon . Because of its compact size and its ability to add things like a zipper pocket and card holder, you can use the Traveler’s Notebook as an all-in-one organizer and wallet for wherever life takes you.

This is the original Traveler’s Notebook, a style of planner often interchangeably called the Midori (the company’s name before 2015). You can find many other brands of this style inspired by the original (they’re sometimes called “fauxdori”). And some of them are great options if you like more colors and patterns.

But the original Traveler’s Notebook is more widely available. It also has a large following in the online planner community, and the Instagram hashtag #midoritravelersnotebook is full of inspiration. While testing, we discovered that several staffers already own the Traveler’s Notebook and love it.

How the Traveler’s Notebook has held up

Senior staff writer Jackie Reeve has been using the Traveler’s Notebook since 2016, and she said it just gets better with age. The leather is soft and beautifully worn in, plus she said it’s easy to throw in her bag without damaging it.

Several of our staffers still use and love theirs, including senior editor Marguerite Preston, who said the system of swapping notebooks in and out works really well. And she said it leaves a lot of room to experiment with formats that work well for her. “My system has definitely evolved over time,” she said. “It’s also fun that you can find third-party sellers of all kinds of variations of inserts on places like Etsy.”

• The leather, which looks pristine when new, quickly becomes worn with visible scuffs and scratches (we think this just adds to the character of the planner). Also, the notebooks won’t lie completely flat. One of our 10 staff testers thought the regular size was too big for the portability he wanted. Using the passport size and keeping fewer notebooks inside would address those concerns.
• Note that the Traveler’s Notebook comes with a blank notebook by default, so you’ll need to buy a planner insert (normally $10 to $15) separately. Options include undated monthly , weekly vertical , and weekly horizontal plus notes section .

Sizes: regular, 4.9 by 8.7 inches; passport, 3.9 by 5.3 inches

Colors: black , brown , camel , blue

Filofax The Original Organizer (personal size)

The best refillable planner.

Though expensive, this Filofax planner is the highest-quality leather option we tested, and it’s small enough to fit in a bag. You can also purchase refills for it from multiple other brands.

Filofax The Original Organizer (A5 size)

A larger refillable planner.

This bigger, A5-size Filofax is just as good as the smaller version, but this one has more writing space. It works with any A5 inserts, so you can purchase refills from whatever brand you like.

Why it’s great: If you want a high-quality refillable planner for business, we recommend Filofax’s The Original Organizer (which is still made by the English company that made the high-quality leather organizers iconic in the 1980s). The layouts come with a good amount of writing space for each day, and the planner has plenty of plain paper in the back for notes and lists.

We looked at several other business planners in stores, including synthetic-leather versions of the Day-Timer and Day Runner planners, and we tested leather and synthetic-leather planners from Franklin, Levenger, and Quo Vadis. The quality of the Filofax planner stood out—the leather looked and felt exceptional, and the stitching was neater. We also prefer the Filofax planner’s overall look, layout, and color choices.

Filofax’s The Original Organizer comes in fewer sizes than other three-ring planners (only two for the model we tested), but it offers more insert options , including dated and undated calendars and an August-to-July academic diary . Third-party companies on Etsy also sell inserts specifically designed to fit Filofax planners. We tested the Personal size, which would be good for carrying in a handbag. The Original Organizer is also available in a larger, A5 size, which works with any A5 paper insert. Be cautious with the Filofax personal-size inserts—some planner brands change the size slightly so that it doesn’t fit a Filofax, or they call it something else, even if the paper fits.

How Filofax’s The Original Organizer has held up

Senior staff writer Jackie Reeve, who has owned and used The Original Personal Organizer in the Union Jack print since 2016, notes that “the leather itself is in great shape, and there’s no real fraying at the stitching or along the edges.” One Wirecutter staffer has had problems with the rings misaligning on her Filofax organizers, but that hasn’t been a universal experience.

Our testers thought Filofax’s The Original Organizer was austere and expensive for a planner. But once you purchase the cover, you only have to buy inserts in subsequent years. If you’re looking for a more affordable ring-bound planner, or if you’d prefer faux leather to real leather, you might like the Simple Stories Carpe Diem A5 Planner (a former also-great pick). It comes in the same personal and A5 sizes, as well as several bright colors and feminine designs. Jackie has had a Filofax planner since 2016, and it still looks new.

Sizes: ring-bound personal, 5.38 by 7.38 inches; ring-bound A5, 7.8 by 9.2 inches

Colors: 17 colors, including the classic leather, patent leather , and pastel Union Jack print

Erin Condren LifePlanner

A customizable planner with an artsy aesthetic.

This designer pick is decorated on the outside and the inside. It features a cover you can personalize, and there are three layouts to choose from.

Why it’s great: If you could use a bit more color in your life, and you’d like to motivate yourself with inspirational quotes and fun stickers, the Erin Condren LifePlanner will give you the most options. At 7 by 9 inches, it’s bigger than most of our other picks, and therefore it has more writing space per day. Our testers liked that it comes in a choice of weekly vertical, weekly horizontal, or hourly layouts. And there’s also a wide range of removable, interchangeable laminated covers —from Hello Kitty and Star Wars designs to abstract shapes to custom photo collages.

Unlike most other planners that have only a cover design and plain pages, the LifePlanner offers three interior-design themes (floral, typography, or paint strokes). The monthly pages are decorated with the theme you choose, the monthly tab pages feature motivational quotes, and the weekly pages’ colored accents match the tabs. The paper has a slightly toothy texture that’s satisfying to write on, especially with a pencil. Due to the high-quality coil binding, the pages move smoothly, so the planner sits flat when it’s open on a desk.

In addition to the included stickers, there are plenty of accessories—covers, stickers, sticky notes, pens—widely available for decorating the LifePlanner. An Etsy search for “Erin Condren stickers” alone yielded more than 100,000 results at the time of publication, and Erin Condren’s site offers plenty of other accessories . If you’re interested in the planner community, the LifePlanner has active posters on Instagram , in Facebook groups, and on YouTube channels .

The planner is sold through the Erin Condren site as well as at Amazon and Staples, but to customize it you’ll need to stick to the official website. The official site also offers specialty planners, including academic planners with class scheduling pages, teacher lesson planners , and a wedding planner book .

How the Erin Condren LifePlanner has held up

Senior staff writer Jackie Reeve has been using Erin Condren planners off and on since 2015, and she still enjoys their durability, layout, and range of available third-party accessories. She found the LifePlanner to be an ideal planner for PTA meetings. Her one function-related complaint is that in 2019 the company changed the layout of its pages slightly, so the perfectly sized stickers she had stockpiled from various Etsy sellers no longer fit. The official site also offers specialty planners, including academic planners with class scheduling pages, teacher lesson planners , and a wedding planner book .

• Some shoppers may not want to support the Erin Condren brand, due to a June 2020 incident the founder was involved in that inflamed tensions surrounding COVID-era social-distancing policies and the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests . Since then, the company has released planners celebrating identity, including Pride Month and Black History Month collections, and donated some of the proceeds to charity. The company is also no longer owned by Erin Condren herself but rather by her longtime business partner, who is also co-owner of EC Design. This is still the best highly decorated planner because of the customization options. However, if you don’t want to shop from Erin Condren, we recommend The Happy Planner or the weekly or daily planners from the Black-owned Ivory Paper Company .
• As for the planner itself, in our initial testing some of our testers wanted something more portable; it is about an inch thick and best suited for using on a desk. Softcover and ring-bound versions are available, though they’re not as customizable as the coiled-bound model.

Sizes: coil-bound , 7 by 9 inches; coil-bound A5, 5.8 by 8.3 inches

Colors: 80-plus prints for coil-bound

Laurel Denise Mini Horizontal Weekly Planner

A planner with a holistic monthly and weekly view.

This planner’s innovative layout lets you simultaneously see your broad plans for the month, along with the weekly and daily details.

Why it’s great: The Laurel Denise Mini Horizontal Weekly Planner has a layout and design unlike any other. Instead of the standard monthly spread followed by weekly pages (or, worse, a section of monthly pages divorced from their weekly counterparts), this planner combines a monthly calendar with weekly pages in one spread.

Say what? How? Flip open the wide planner (it measures 9.875 inches wide by 7.25 inches high), and you’ll find a monthly calendar on the left, a notes section with a monthly to-do list on the right, and, nestled in between, four to five half-size sheets for the weekly pages. This means you can see your appointments and special events in the calendar view while also seeing your day-specific notes and weekly to-dos at once. It’s a game changer if you’ve ever struggled with balancing long-term planning and day-to-day focusing.

In addition to this unique layout, the Laurel Denise planner offers two yearly pages at the front to plan out goals and things to remember, a monthly habit tracker, a few notes pages at the back, and a page for lists like hobbies, gratitude, and books. We like that these pages are available but not forced on you on every page, as you find with other planners.

The Mini Horizontal Weekly Planner is dated, but Laurel Denise also sells undated planners and vertical weekly planners . These are all substantially larger than the Mini; they are sized like scrapbooks or large photobooks, so they’re not as portable. Other variations include a dated academic planner , teacher planners , and project planners .

To unlock the full potential of this planner, check out Laurel Denise’s guide on how to use the planner system for inspirational implementations.

Even though this planner is a “mini” version, it’s wide when unfolded. You can fold the Laurel Denise Mini Horizontal Weekly Planner back, but then you’ll lose the benefit of seeing each week spread across two pages. So just know you’ll need some space on your desk to use this planner.

Sizes: mini, 9.875 by 7.25 inches; regular, 12.75 by 9.25 inches

Colors: evergreen (mini), various colors and patterns for the larger planners

Agendio Planner

The best customizable planner.

This planner offers a seemingly infinite number of customization options, so you can create one that’s truly your own.

Why it’s great: If you’ve never had a planner that’s been just right for your needs, the Agendio Planner could solve that problem. It’s the most customizable planner we’ve come across.

In addition to offering three planner sizes, three paper thicknesses, three layout formats (days shown in a column, row, or grid), and a myriad of hardcover and spiral-bound printed covers, the Agendio Planner lets you fine-tune just about everything on the page, such as the fonts and font colors. You can add your own events or repeating activities, like monthly meetings or gym schedules, and they can be highlighted in different colors. This is the best way we’ve found to create a one-of-a-kind planner.

We think the best feature of the Agendio Planner is its “pagelets” page sections—blocks that can be used for notes, lists, reminders, and more. You can customize the pagelets’ sizes, labels, background shading, and line spacing. A specific type of section, called the “span,” stretches across a vertical weekly spread, so you can view tasks or projects that overlap multiple days and plan your time better.

For further customization, this planner has an “extra pages library,” which includes templates such as budget, habits, meals, and meetings. And, as with this planner’s other pages, you can place these extra pages wherever you want in the book.

• If you don’t like making a lot of decisions, the Agendio Planner is not for you. It can be as overwhelming as redesigning your bathroom, and going through all of the customization options can take a good part of your morning or afternoon. But we think it’s worth it if you want a very specific, personalized planner.
• The price of this planner changes depending on how many bells and whistles you add. Tabs, extra pages, and detachable corners, for example, cost extra, and you won’t see the full price of the planner until you’ve finished customizing it. The typical cost is between $45 and $95, according to the company.

Sizes: journal, 5.5 by 8 inches; medium, 7 by 9 inches; large, 8.5 by 11 inches Colors: over 150 soft spiral-bound printed covers; 10 synthetic leather hard-cover colors

If you’re looking for a traditional, dated planner: Consider the MochiThings Medium Ardium Planner . The bookbound Ardium stands out from other basic monthly and weekly planners due to its elegant design details, such as the colored page edges that group the months together, the sturdy cover with a grippy feel, and the light brown accent shading on each page. The layout offers a two-page monthly spread followed by two-page weekly spreads with the days of the week in boxes on the left and a gridded note page on the right. MochiThings makes a variety of planners in other formats and styles that may be worth exploring as well.

If you have a packed agenda and need a planner with daily schedules: The Day Designer Daily Planner may be for you. It has a roomy, two-page spread for each day, with sections for top priorities, a daily schedule, to-do list, notes, and prompts such as deadlines, gratitude, and dinner. Because it’s a daily planner, the Day Designer is very bulky, and the pages can be hard to turn. The “mini” size is 6.6 inches wide by 8.3 inches tall, with a 1.5-inch thickness, and it weighs almost 2 pounds.

If you want a customizable planner that doesn’t require a lot of time or effort to create: Check out the Plum Paper planner. It's not as thoroughly customizable as the Agendio Planner, but it’s simpler to design, with fewer steps to make choices and a more-intuitive user interface. A “simplified” mode reduces the number of options to choose from, for an even more streamlined process. To be clear, the Plum Paper planner still requires an investment in time and effort—a bit more than for creating a photo book, for example. Yet it may not be as overwhelming for some people as the everything-you-may-want-and-then-some Agendio. The Plum Paper planner is available with coil or disc binding, and there’s a hardcover with a printed design option, instead of the standard plastic cover.

If you want a planner with goal-setting and habit-tracking prompts: Consider the Purpose Planner . It’s an undated, large (7.5-by-9.8-inch), six-month productivity planner, with sections for lists like “to buy,” reading, bucket lists, and to-do lists for work or home. The Purpose Planner encourages you to think about all aspects of your life and the roles you play (such as parent, employee, sibling, artist, pet owner), so you’re on top of everything that matters to you.

If you need an academic planner: The Class Tracker is the best student-focused planner. It has pages for jotting down each semester’s schedule (including the summer break), and each day in the two-page weekly spread has sections for assignments, tasks, and quizzes/exams/papers/projects. Some sections may feel too prescriptive or unnecessary, such as the habit-tracking “self care corner” and “X weeks until Y” parts. The cardboard cover isn’t as sturdy as those of most of our main picks, and the design looks dated, but the structured layout does the job.

If you’ve researched options for artistic planning, goal tracking, or bullet journaling, you might be familiar with Hobonichi planners. This Japanese brand is known for its Tomoe River Paper , which is ultrathin (almost half the thickness of a piece of copy paper) and known for its resistance to bleeding and feathering from many different pens (even fountain pens). This paper keeps the Hobonichi planners slim and lightweight, even though they are packed with a page for every day. And it makes them very appealing for artists and journalers who like portability.

Several Wirecutter staffers use Hobonichi planners and love them, and in our tests the Hobonichi Techo Original and the Hobonichi Techo Cousin fared quite well. We’re not featuring them as main picks because their availability is limited. JetPens stocks Hobonichi planners, and Hobonichi has an Amazon storefront . Several of the covers we looked at on Amazon had low stock. But shipping time is much shorter on Amazon, and you’ll have a better user experience on Amazon than ordering from the Japanese site, which one staffer noted was very basic. If you find a planner and a cover you like in stock on Amazon or JetPens, or if you can find these planners locally at a stationery shop or bookstore, they’re worth a look.

Planners are for anyone who likes writing things down on paper, and they can be a particularly good tool if you’re unhappy with digital options for tracking your time and your task lists. As Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Jackson Books, told us, “You can approach it on your own terms. It’s calm and still, it doesn’t beep out reminders.”

The best planner will accommodate the way you think and what you want to capture, rather than forcing you to fill in a template that doesn’t fit your needs. Some people use planners not just for looking into the future but also as a sort of journal or scrapbook, for jotting down memories. So finding the right planner that you can use year after year is indeed a win.

To sort through the many options, consider the following:

Layout: If you just want to keep track of your appointments and deadlines, if you don’t use a planner to take notes, or if you’re a minimalist, you might prefer a sparse calendar—for instance, the Muji planner’s weekly horizontal format, which offers a wide block of space for each day stacked on top of the next.

People with a busy schedule—including those who manage a multi-person household—will need more room for each day. A vertical weekly format, where each day is laid out in columns, would divide the days into time chunks for many appointments or events. (Most of our planner picks offer a vertical layout as well as a horizontal one.) Or you might need a thick planner, such as the Day Designer, with one or two pages dedicated to each day.

Dates: Dated planners conveniently print holidays and sometimes other time-sensitive information, such as moon phases, so you don’t have to write those down yourself. Undated planners, however, let you start whenever you want and skip days or weeks guilt-free. If you have an erratic schedule (for example, if you’re a freelancer), an undated planner may suit you best.

Size: Most planners come in “journal” notebook sizes, 5.5 by 8 inches. These are ideal to use on a cramped desk and to take with you on a commute to the office. Larger sizes, of course, offer more room to write, but they also take up more space. So consider where you’ll use the planner most and whether you want it to be portable.

Cover and binding: Softcover planners made of cardboard or laminate weigh less, but they aren’t as sturdy as hardcover planners. Coil-bound planners are easier to fold flat or fold back than stitched planners, but they can snag on other objects in your bag. This can be an aesthetic choice, too. Think about the type of notebook you like to use best, and apply that to your planner choice.

Design: Last but not least, pick a planner that looks great to you. You’re going to use it every day, so it should bring you joy every day.

Our best advice: See if the planner company offers printable layouts (typically PDF downloads). Print them out and spend a week with them. Or check Instagram for that planner, to see how others are using the layouts, and consider how you’ll use them.

Paper planners encompass a broad range of options, from minimal, undated books with very little formatting to neatly partitioned pages. Some have no adornments or decorations inside, while others have pretty themes and cheerful, motivational messages throughout. We looked at the whole spectrum and decided to select planners in different categories, with an emphasis on those that are customizable or offer some flexibility beyond the standard dated monthly-weekly format.

We researched dozens of brands to narrow down our testing picks, and we asked Wirecutter staffers what they would want to pay for a new planner. You can generally expect to pay less than $50 for a good planner, with a few exceptions. A planner should fit your specific needs, and you may discover that a simple, inexpensive planner you find at a big-box store works better for you than our picks.

Since 2017, we’ve tested 64 planners in different rounds, and our testers have included a mix of paper-planner owners, people who wanted to get a paper planner, and those who’d tried paper planners and were dissatisfied. They gave us notes on what they would personally look for in a paper planner (size, writing space, fonts, the feel of the materials) and how they wanted to use one (simple scheduling, goal planning, and so on).

Our testers looked at each blank new planner and gave their feedback, and in some cases they changed their criteria after examining a planner in person. This is what happens to a lot of people—they buy a planner and later realize it isn’t right for them. So we tried to pick planners that worked for what people actually wanted, not what they thought they wanted.

We knew of several brands through the planner community and what we personally used; we also talked to several staffers about what they used, and we interviewed experts, who helped us determine our criteria for picking planners to test. The following features are the ones to look for:

Customization: We looked for planners that offered different page layout options, as well as many cover colors and designs, so more people could find the best fit. For ring-bound planners, we wanted a standard paper size so we could swap in any inserts from any compatible brand.

Plenty of space for writing: We wanted planners that had enough room for us to jot down tasks, appointments, and notes. We looked for tall, well-spaced lines or boxes wide enough to fit two or three words in a row.

A sturdy and low-frustration binding: JetPens’ Shu Yao noted, “Many planners are meant to last the entire year or academic year, so it needs to survive daily wear.” Coil bindings allow for smoother page-turning than disc bindings, which have individual, disconnected discs that don’t move fluidly together. A ring-bound, refillable planner is especially useful if it holds a standard, easy-to-find paper size. Book-bound or hardbound covers are less bulky than the other types. We preferred planners that let the book lie flat when open.

High-quality materials: We wanted planner covers that held up to wear, paper that was pleasant to write on, and sturdy tabs that didn’t bend when flipped. Sarah McNally of McNally Jackson Books told us, “A planner is a physical relationship you are embarking on. You will touch it as much as a wallet for the next year.” Laminated, leather, or hard covers last longer than cardboard or card-stock covers. And the paper should be creamy and sturdy—Yao told us this is a key consideration when JetPens looks for planners to carry. You don’t want paper so flimsy that it tears as you turn the pages or lets ink bleed through to the next page.

A variety of sizes: We looked for brands that offered both smaller, portable sizes and larger, desk-appropriate sizes. Especially with refillable planners—which are often a pricier initial purchase—we liked having size options that were standardized across a few brands of planners and inserts (such as the A5 size, which fits 5.83-by-8.27-inch paper).

Availability: We decided to focus on brands that were readily available online and, preferably, in at least some physical stores. The experts we interviewed gave us some great suggestions for smaller planner companies, but many of those could be difficult to source and were too niche for this guide.

With all of the planners we tested, we paid close attention to the paper quality and how well the sheets held ink from Sharpies and Uni-ball gel pens. We looked at the construction of the bindings and how sturdy the covers were, and we considered how useful the layouts were and how much writing space they offered. We also painted on them with watercolors to see how the paper held water and color.

This is not a comprehensive list of paper planners we’ve tested. We have removed models that are discontinued or no longer meet our criteria.

Refillable planners

The Simple Stories Carpe Diem A5 Planner is a former also-great pick. And if you avoid buying leather, or you want something less expensive than a Filofax planner, it’s a great choice. It comes in fewer colors than Filofax’s The Original Organizer, and most binders and inserts have a feminine design. In stores we’ve seen these only at Hobby Lobby, but they’re still easier to get than many of the imported planners we’ve tested and recommended. It’s also available in a personal size.

The Happy Planner is a highly decorated planner, similar to the Erin Condren LifePlanner. We didn’t like this planner’s disc binding; opening it all the way around to look at one page at a time wasn’t as smooth as with a coil-bound planner. However, one of our staffers long-term tested this planner for a year and told us the format really worked for her, and she didn’t mind the discs. You can technically refill these planners, swap covers, or add inserts, but they’re so often on sale at craft stores that most people just buy a new one each year.

The Levenger Circa Weekly smartPlanner felt more useful than the Franklin planner we tested, but it’s expensive (a leather cover is sold separately), and we’ve found disc-bound systems more difficult to use.

We reconsidered the classic FranklinPlanner Original Weekly Ring-bound Planner in 2018, after initially dismissing other versions we saw in office-supply stores. We tested the compact and classic sizes and found the Franklin inserts to be especially cramped for writing space, compared with what you’d get with the Filofax planner.

Spiral-bound planners

The Papier Planner , available in spiral or book binding, offers a wide range of cover styles that you can personalize with your name or initials. We tested the academic year version, but the majority of panelists preferred the Class Tracker’s higher-contrast pages and darker fonts. That said, two panelists (including one college-bound tester who dislikes planners in general) preferred the smooth feel of the Papier’s pages, as well as its helpful sections such as schedule, deadlines, and project notes. It’s worth a look if you want an academic planner that looks and feels a bit more elegant than basic monthly-and-weekly planners.

The Day Designer planner is a former pick, and it’s senior staff writer Jackie Reeve’s personal favorite for everyday use, but it’s bigger and bulkier than our picks. If you like a weighty planner that you can leave on your desk, this one has a hard-board cover, sturdy spiral binding, and daily page layouts with space for appointments, to-do lists, and notes.

The Planner Pad is another former pick, and we recommend it if you’re looking to group your tasks and appointments by category. Its highly structured format isn’t as flexible as those of our picks, but the layout may match how you like to divide your week and your days.

Our testers weren’t wild about the Blue Sky Weekly and Monthly Planner ’s layouts, which have a pattern on every page. But Blue Sky offers endless print options, so you may find one you like. Blue Sky previously offered an academic year planner with extra functionality for students, and we liked it, but it no longer exists.

We tested the Black-owned Ivory Paper Company’s 12 Month Daily Planner , which is similar to the Day Designer planner. It’s a nice book with a pleasing cover, but the paper felt like copy paper, and the page layouts were less sophisticated. It was hard to see how this planner cost more than a Day Designer planner, which isn’t cheap.

The At-A-Glance weekly appointment book is a classic business planner available at office-supply stores, but it was a bit too big, too businesslike, and too narrow for us to write in the hourly format.

We recommend Field Notes notebooks as the best pocket notebook for jotting stuff down, but our testers didn’t like the Field Notes 56-Week Planner . They said its looks were less appealing than those of other models, and they noted the lines on the paper were too dark for what they wanted in a planner.

Book-bound planners

The only thing keeping us from fully recommending the Muji High Quality Monthly Planner is its limited availability. If you want a standard dated planner, run to get it when it comes out every November to December, because the silky paper is just exquisite.

The Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal 2 is an excellent notebook with guidelines for bullet journaling (also known as “BuJo”). But we eliminated this former pick from the running because it’s really more of a blank notebook than an actual planner, which should have at least some date structure.

Similarly, Rhodia’s Goalbook bullet journal contains only grid-dot paper, with no instructions or tips, and our testers found that design to be too freeform. Our testers thought the cover was too fragile (it was already dented at one corner from shipping) and that the grid dots on the pages were too dark.

The Moo Perpetual Planner is an undated planner with high-quality paper, as one would expect from the company that makes the best business cards . It has a versatile format, with blank space on the top third of each page and days shown in columns beneath that (the week spans two pages). We found the columns a bit narrow (they’d require tiny handwriting to be usable). And we found the colored cardstock dividers for each quarter to be somewhat puzzling to use (they’re all lined differently, with an isometric pattern on one section). However, we like that this planner invites creativity in terms of figuring out how you’ll use the space provided.

The Paperage Planner has the same high-quality, thick paper as the lined journal , which is our budget notebook pick. The planner has a standard monthly and weekly layout, and it’s a good option if you want to spend less than $15 on a hardcover planner with a sturdy cover. We think the MochiThings Medium Ardium Planner feels more polished and special, though it costs more than three times as much.

We tested the Lemome Weekly & Monthly Planner in summer 2020 after seeing it rise in popularity over the previous year. It has a 1950s prep-school charm to it, with a black cover, gold lettering, and a pen holder. After the MochiThings Ardium Planner, it’s the next-best book-bound planner we’ve tried. It’s not very expensive, but the layout is notably basic, and it comes in only one color.

A former pick, the Panda Planner Classic has the most structured layout, with prompts and partitioned sections, such as “Today’s Priorities,” “Morning Review,” and “Things I Will Do to Make This Week Great.” It may be too prescriptive for most people, and it covers only three months, but if you want to try a new productivity system, it’s ideal for goal planning.

The Passion Planner was unpopular in testing because of the inside page design, the cramped writing space, and a cover that showed greasy thumbprints. One staffer liked the visual design of the layouts, but we preferred the Purpose Planner for goal tracking.

The Full Focus Planner is another option similar to the Purpose Planner and the Panda Planner Classic, with prompts to help keep you accountable and productive. In our tests, it wasn’t as intuitive to learn to use, and that might be a barrier for people to stay with it.

The Productivity Planner is also laid out with prompts and involves a system for tracking your time and output. But of all the planners we’ve tested, this one is the most complicated to use—it has 34 pages of instructions at the start of the book. It also lacks simple calendar layouts to track appointments or to plan ahead for projects and goals.

The Jstory Large Weekly Planner is a former pick for bare-bones, simple scheduling. The Muji Recycled Paper Weekly Planner has a less distracting minimalist design, and it usually costs $15 less.

The Ohh Deer Daily Planner offers only enough room for four months’ worth of entries, so you’d have to get three per year, making it one of the most expensive planners we’ve tested. And though this planner is sold in several cover designs, each one features a slightly different interior layout that isn’t disclosed on its product page.

Planners we tested or looked at that lacked sufficient room for jotting down daily to-do lists and notes include the Papier Planner , the regular-size Moleskine planners , and the Leuchtturm1917 Week Planner .

This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.

Meet your guides

Jackie Reeve

Jackie Reeve is a senior staff writer covering bedding, organization, and home goods at Wirecutter since 2015. Previously she was a school librarian, and she’s been a quilter for about 15 years. Her quilt patterns and her other written work have appeared in various publications. She moderates Wirecutter’s staff book club and makes her bed every morning.

Kaitlyn Wells

Kaitlyn Wells is a senior staff writer who advocates for greater work flexibility by showing you how to work smarter remotely without losing yourself. Previously, she covered pets and style for Wirecutter. She's never met a pet she didn’t like, although she can’t say the same thing about productivity apps. Her first picture book, A Family Looks Like Love , follows a pup who learns that love, rather than how you look, is what makes a family.

Melanie Pinola

Melanie Pinola covers home office, remote work, and productivity as a senior staff writer at Wirecutter. She has contributed to print and online publications such as The New York Times, Consumer Reports, Lifehacker, and PCWorld, specializing in tech, work, and lifestyle/family topics. She’s thrilled when those topics intersect—and when she gets to write about them in her PJs.

Further reading

The Best Paper Shredders

by Melanie Pinola

We tested top shredders for use at home and in small offices and found easy-to-use workhorses that can help protect your identity.

What a Wirecutter Home-Office Expert Uses to Organize Her Desk

Velcro strips, a glass easel, and a desk pad are just a few of the things our productivity expert uses to get through each workday.

How to Go Paperless With Your Home Office

by Ganda Suthivarakom and Erica Ogg

Here’s how to save your tax records digitally so you can get rid of the paper in your home office

5 Tips to Declutter Your Home Office

by Jenni Gritters

Clutter can creep up on you when you work from home. Here’s how to get organized so it doesn’t mess with your focus and productivity.

Every product is independently selected by (obsessive) editors. Things you buy through our links may earn us a commission.

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31 of the Very Best Planners

Including daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly options to help you get things done..

In this article

• Best overall
• Best weekly
• Best monthly
• Best quarterly
• Best customizable

Instead of an app or gadget that claims to jump-start your productivity, consider investing in a good paper planner . There is plenty of research that shows how actually writing down your to-do list and schedule for the day — rather than typing it out on a laptop or iPhone — makes you feel more engaged in the task at hand. And once the calendar year is complete, a physical planner becomes an artifact — a time capsule, if you will — of its happenings. Leafing through the well-loved Hobonichi Techo planners I’ve used over the years brings me almost as much pleasure as scribbling in them did.

While I’ve been devoted to Hobonichi Techo for most of my adult life, I’ve covered the Strategist’s stationery beat long enough to know that finding the right planner out of the very vast and very particular world of paper goods can be overwhelming. (I have, after all, updated this list faithfully every January and was tasked with selecting the best 100 notebooks for our massive notebook-testing story .)

So to find the best planners, I talked to 31 productivity experts, life coaches, and people who love stationery (including a few Strategist staffers) about their favorites, then culled our archives for standout styles we’ve written about before. I’ve included my own thoughts on our best overall planner, which I’ve been testing personally for the past five years. Any of the 33 planners recommended below will surely go a long way toward keeping you on track this year.

Update on August 22, 2024: Added restock notifications for the Traveler’s Weekly Vertical Planner , Kokuyo Jibun Techo 2025 Diary , Studio Milligram The Daily Non-Diary Dot Grid A5 , and the Appointed 2025 Wire Daily Planner ; updated prices and checked stock for all products.

What we’re looking for

Arguably, the most essential way to categorize planners is by how they’re broken down: weekly, daily, monthly, or quarterly. According to our experts, daily planners tend to devote an entire page to each day and are best suited for those with lots of daily tasks or for list-makers who need to focus on their day-to-day organization. A weekly planner’s layout allots one to two pages per week and is great for those juggling many weekly meetings, events, and deadlines. A monthly or quarterly planner is great if you have long-term goals and best for big-picture thinkers who have a lot of large-scale projects on their plates. And if none of these layouts sound exactly right for your needs, perhaps you’d prefer a completely customizable planner (which we have a few of below).

Planners come in a range of sizes, which impacts how portable they are and how much space there is to write in. Generally, if you’re looking for something super-portable, a pocket or personal planner is best. If portability is less of a factor or if you prefer roomier layouts, then a half- or full-letter-size planner is probably for you. We’ve noted the exact dimensions of each planner so you can easily measure the size before buying.

Aside from style, the cover impacts how well the planner will hold up against daily wear and tear. It also affects the weight: Is it hardcover, softcover, or leather-bound? If you’re less concerned about adding weight to your bag and want something that’ll definitely hold up all year, consider a leather-bound or hardcover planner. But if you need something lightweight, a well-made softcover planner is a good bet.

Best planner overall

Layout: Daily | Size: 4 by 6 inches | Cover: Softcover

The Hobonichi Techo is a longtime Strategist favorite, used by three of our present and former staffers (all three of whom have used the planner for years to stay organized). This long-term testing and devotion has earned it the top spot here. As New York Magazine deputy editor Alexis Swerdloff wrote in her initial ode to the cult Japanese planner, “The leather-bound book is hefty and feels like I’m actually holding something substantial (unlike a Moleskine ) while still being incredibly compact: It’s little bit taller than an iPhone 6 and about the width of a Kit Kat.” Former Strategist associate editor Louis Cheslaw praises the planner’s “hard-wearing cover, thin (but quality) pages for a slim profile, lie-flat opening, and compact size.” It definitely falls into the “if you know, you know” category of stationery. I find that it’s the perfect size to chuck into any bag and deceptively durable. I’m not precious with my planners and tend to subject them to a lot of wear and tear. The Hobonichi Techo has never torn on me and looks as good on December 31 as it did when I bought it the previous January. I also love that the light gridding on each page grants every day some order but still gives me the space to dash off notes, lists, and doodles.

Best weekly planners

Best weekly planner overall.

Layout: Weekly | Size: 5.75 by 8.25 inches | Cover: Hardcover

I first heard about German stationery company Leuchtturm1917’s weekly planner from self-described “planner power user” Perrin Drumm. As she writes, the planner’s “hardback is perfect for planning on the go or taking notes in your lap.” Cindy Thompson , the blogger behind Instagram’s Plan Another Day , loves this planner because it “features a simple weekly layout that can be utilized in many ways.” While I am devoted to my Hobonichi, I did like the layout of the planner, which has days on one side and spaces for notes on the other. The notebook also features a “project plan” section that I had no use for but could be helpful to those with long-term vision. Plus the feel of the notebooks itself is quite nice with the sturdy hardcover and paper that has some nice heft. If you’re loyal to the Leuchtturm1917 , the brand also makes a two-year version of the planner, which is quite cost-effective.

Best design-y weekly planner

Layout: Weekly | Size: 6 by 8.5 inches | Cover: Hardcover

Papier planners are well known for their bright colors and thoughtful designs. Both Strategist writer Rachel Griffiths and Strategist deals editor Sam Daly swear by them. “I like weekly overviews with a lot of space to take notes and doodle, and I don’t need many extras like an address-book page or a place to make a list of intents. And my biggest must-have: a ribbon to keep your place,” explains Daly. “Papier’s planners have all of the above, and its products come in so many fun patterns and designs the hardest part of picking this planner was just choosing one.” Griffiths agress: “I always look forward to picking out my Papier planner because the designs are really cute and colorful.”

Best weekly planner with tearaway corners

Layout: Weekly |  Size: 4 by 6 inches | Cover: Hardcover

This Rhodia weekly planner is organized with the days of the week on one side and a gridded page for notes and scribbles on the other. Each day’s schedule is broken down into hour-by-hour lines (from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.), and the pages have tearaway corners to help you keep your place.

Best large weekly planner

Layout: Weekly | Size: 7.2 by 10.1 inches | Cover: Softcover

If you want something with a simpler, more bold design, you can’t go wrong with this one. According to Drumm , “If Massimo Vignelli had $15 to buy a planner, he’d surely pick this one.” She loves the “non-nonsense” layout: “There is barely any type on the pages, so the dates, and pretty much everything else, are entirely up to you to plot out.” While the planner comes in four sizes, Drumm prefers the large, “which feels less throwaway than the smaller options.” She adds that her design-y friends go for the black-on-black option, but Drumm prefers the planner in Pepto-Bismol pink.

Best vertical weekly planner

Layout: Weekly | Size: 4.3 by 8.3 inches | Cover: Softcover

This weekly planner from Traveler’s lets you fill in the dates as you please, so you can start using it at any point in the year. On top of that, because it contains just six months’ worth of undated weekly pages, it’s a great option to consider if you’re picking up a planner later in the year. In addition to those weekly pages, the planner contains a few pages laid out as vertical monthly calendars that you can use to keep track of important dates like birthdays or anniversaries. The paper itself is bleed- and feather-resistant, as well as fountain-pen friendly. While the planner as-is only has a simple card-stock cover, you can get a handsome leather cover to keep it in for an additional $50.

Editor’s note: The Traveler’s Weekly Vertical Planner is currently out of stock, but you can sign up for a restock notification on JetPen’s site.

Best weekly planner with hourly columns

Layout: Weekly | Size: 8.5 by 16.5 centimeters | Cover: Hardcover

The Ispira planner’s calendar pages break down each week across two pages; dated columns provide space to jot things down for each day (the columns are broken down into hours for those who plan that obsessively). When it comes to stationery, Drumm calls Fabriano a “gold standard” because of the elevated color combos. Its planners, which she describes as “objects of beauty,” are made in Italy “by paper artisans who are truly deserving of that overused title.” The columns are skinny, though, so folks who like to write a lot in their planners may want something with more space.

Best softcover weekly planner

Layout: Weekly | Size: 3.5 by 5.5 inches | Cover: Softcover

This Moleskine has a simple layout: When opened, the left side’s pages are broken down into days of the week, while the right side’s are lined for taking notes. Personally, I find Moleskin planners to be a bit too minimal for my needs (I prefer each day to get a full page), but I could see it being useful for someone who keeps most of their calendar digitally. But for folks who’ve pared down, it’s a solid option.

Best hardcover weekly planner

Layout: Weekly | Size: 5.1 by 7.4 inches | Cover: Hardcover

This handsome hardcover planner lays flat and comes in five colors: red, green, gray, brown, and navy. It is also the planner of choice of actress Ayo Edebiri , who uses this diary for planning and scrapbooking . The layout has weekly pages on the left-hand side and gridded pages on the right-hand side, which she says is the superior layout for writing. “It makes me feel like a scientist, even if I’m writing things as simple as ‘Do laundry’ and ‘Seriously, please do laundry,’” she says.

Best time-management-focused weekly planner

Layout: Weekly | Size: 7.75 by 9.75 inches | Cover: Hardcover

This planner combines the scheduling elements you’d want in a regular planner with the goal-setting elements you might look for in a journal. In addition to its gridded weekly (and month- and year-at-a-glance) pages, this has space for you to write down both your roles and goals as a partner, employee, and friend. “It goes beyond being a planner and is really a clarifying tool for understanding how you want to invest your time,” explains author and time-management coach Elizabeth Grace Saunders. “It even invites you to track your daily habits” according to different priorities, Saunders adds, allowing users to tackle their goals in a more holistic way.

Best cloth cover weekly planner

In addition to its weekly pages, the Ponderlily planner has monthly ones and spaces for jotting down tasks, notes, and things you’re grateful for (as you might in a journal). Calling out details like “a cloth cover, foiled-copper lettering, lay-flat binding,” and inspiring quotes that begin each new month, Saunders has just one word for this planner: “Beautiful.”

Best weekly planner for heavy notetakers

Layout: Weekly |  Size: 5.75 by 8.25 inches | Cover: Faux leather cover

For those who use digital calendars for scheduling appointments but still want a paper planner to help them make the best use of their time, I recommend the Lemome planner. Instead of writing down appointments and logistics, brand strategist and writer Neha Gandhi outlines each day’s main goal in her planner. That helps her keep focused during the day and track projects over time. “I like this particular planner because it doesn’t waste real estate on huge day-by-day calendars and instead gives only high-level monthly and note-taking weekly views. I can organize meeting notes by the day they were taken (and can then cross-reference the date to the meeting the notes came from in my digital cal) so that I’m not flipping endlessly through a notebook to find one nugget of information that’s somehow always just out of reach,” says Gandhi. She also likes the convenient size: “It neatly fits into any work bag.”

Best weekly planner that doubles as a wallet

Layout: Weekly | Size: 4.7 by 7.5 inches | Cover: Softcover

In addition to being an excellent planner, the Jibun Techo has a card-holder insert that can do double duty as your wallet. “I just need to grab Jibun Techo and my keys and I am ready to head out!” says Wakako Takagi, a co-founder of Los Angeles–based stationery store Baum-kuchen . “I use the weekly pages to keep me oriented with detailed appointments, things to remember, and to document of some of the key ingredients in life (like how many miles I run each day),” she says, adding that it also has monthly pages she uses as a master planner.

Editor’s Note: The Kokuyo 2025 Diary is available for pre-order at the Kokuyo Store.

Best splurge-worthy weekly planner

Layout: Weekly | Size: 5.5 by 7.5 inches | Cover: Leather cover

If you feel like splurging, the Smythson Soho Diary is the way to go. The leather brand has been around for over 100 years and its planners are carried by extremely chic people far and wide. “Larger than a pocket calendar, which affords little writing space, and smaller than a desk diary, which is like lugging around a textbook, the Soho is the ideal size,” says writer Leah Bhabha. She likes the formatting, too. “The weekly agenda devotes a sizable square to each day, and there’s a weekly to-do list on the opposite page.” Plus the paper itself is “half the thickness and weight of normal pages, but suffice to say, they make for easy writing with no ink bleeding through.”

Best (less expensive) splurge-worthy weekly planner

Layout: Weekly |  Size: 4 by 7 inches | Cover: Leather cover

For a less-expensive option from Smythson, I suggest the Memoranda Agenda. The layout divides its dated calendar pages between full weeks (on the left) and a blank lined page for notes opposite each week of the year (on the right). The Smythson agenda linked above has a handy pocket on the back cover to stash bits and bobs, like receipts or a checkbook, though it is available without a pocket (which also saves you a few dollars).

Best thematic weekly planner

Layout: Weekly | Size: 7” x 9.5” | Cover: Softcover

For over than 30 years, editor Julian Rothenstein has curated his Redstone Diaries : a planner filled with ephemera all centered on a certain theme (last year’s was beauty; this year’s is family). “As someone who grows paralyzed when faced with a procession of blank pages, I’m not really a big notebook person (most of my stray thoughts are scattered in bits and pieces across the Notes app). But opening a journal where half the pages are already filled with something lovely, creative, and valuable takes all the pressure off and may even inspire some beautiful musings of my own,” says Strategist writer Kitty Guo.

Best productivity-focused weekly planner

Layout: Weekly | Size: 5.8 by 8.3 inches | Cover: Hardcover

Clever Fox made its first appearance in our story about the best planners for teachers . But with pages dedicated to goal-setting, list-making, and scheduling, I think this would make a great option for non-teachers as well, especially because the layout breaks down daily tasks so they are less overwhelming.

Best daily planners

Best overall daily planner.

Layout: Daily | Size: 8.3 by 5.8 inches | Cover: Softcover

While I have never strayed from my Hobonichi Techo, this planner above does give me a little pause. Strategist writer (and self-proclaimed stationery nerd) Lauren Ro bought the Hobonichi Techo Cousin, which she describes as “the larger, more souped-up version” of my beloved Techo. It includes monthly, weekly, and daily spreads in a relatively compact size. While she has mostly relied on weekly planners in the past, the added space has become super-helpful for keeping track of both herself and her family. “I appreciate the gridded daily pages for their structured, but not too structured, layout that includes a schedule column on the left and a priority checklist at the top; the rest of the page is open, and I use it for jotting down diarylike musings, family-meal planning, and whatever else I want to commit to paper,” she adds. Because the Cousin does not have the leatherlike cover of the Techo, Ro suggests adding a vinyl protector to reinforce the card-stock cover. But, like the Techo, the Cousin goes in and out of stock, so if you want one for 2024, don’t dilly-dally.

@thestrategist It’s almost time to break in the new planner! 🤗📔 #stationerylover #hobonichicousin #plannertok ♬ original sound - the.strategist

Best undated daily planner

Layout: Daily | Size: 21 by 25 centimeters | Cover: Softcover

Two Strategist staffers have used a version of this planner from Australian stationery store Milligram. One is Ro, who first wrote about it back in 2018: “With a variety of abstract covers, colorways, and programs, they are the planners of my dreams. I chose the daily ‘non-diary’ with dot-grid pages for each day of the year.” The following year , she tried the brand’s Family Life weekly diary , “which includes space for action lists, budgeting, meal planning, and more.” Former Strategist editor Maxine Builder used this dotted non-diary to keep track of the Strategist’s editorial calendar, because each page has plenty of space for the day’s to-do lists and notes, and the planner makes it easy to flip months ahead. “It also just looks very nice sitting on a desk, and the linen wears well over the course of a year,” says Builder.

Editor’s note: The Studio Milligram The Daily Non-Diary Dot Grid A5 is currently unavailable for 2024, but we will check back if it releases a 2025 version.

Best softcover daily planner

Layout: Daily |  Size: 105 by 148 millimeters | Cover: Softcover

For those who prefer notebooks or planners with lay-flat binding, this undated daily planner from Stalogy is extremely flexible. Drumm says it’s made of onion-skin-like paper that “feels wonderfully retro” and doesn’t bleed through despite its thinner consistency. “This fact really deserves more exclamation points, because if you like inky pens and thin paper, then you’ve never gotten your way,” Drumm explains. “As far as layout goes, the type is minimal and the light-gray printing is unobtrusive,” she says, adding that the fill-in-the-date format means “you can start things off whenever you damn well please.”

Best spiral-bound daily planner

Layout: Daily | Size: 7.5” × 9.5” | Cover: Hardcover

If you prefer a spiral bound planner, I recommend Appointed’s daily planners, which feature a brass-wire binding and a foil-stamped, water-resistant cloth cover. “I chose Appointed’s Wire Daily Planner because it has a classy dark-gray cover and is spiral bound, so it will blend into my desk when it’s closed and lay flat when it’s open,” says Strategist managing editor Kelsie Schrader . “Each day is a full page that’s broken into a column for my schedule and one for tasks I have to accomplish, plus plenty of room below those two columns for any other notes I want to make.”

Editor’s note: The Appointed 2024 Wire Daily Planner is currently unavailable for 2024, but the brand will be releasing its 2025 planners soon.

Best to-do-list-focused daily planner

Layout: Daily | Size: 7.5” × 9.5” | Cover: Softcover

Ban.do is one of my favorite sources for cheery, colorful stationery that is beloved by celebrities and teens alike. While former Strategist writer Latifah Miles was a self-described “die-hard planner user” for many years, she found that the traditional calendar layout was no longer working for her current lifestyle. “I still really like to write things down and find that a visual to-do list is super-helpful to my general organization, which is why I ordered this undated daily planner from Ban.do that allows me to list out my tasks when I want without being chained to filling it in every single day,” she explains. Miles especially loves the peppy planner’s “Priorities” section, which she uses to highlight a few tasks from her longer to-do list that need to be accomplished each day.

Best motivational daily planner

Layout: Daily | Size: 6 by 8.5 inches | Cover: Hardcover

The 5 Second Journal, written by motivational speaker Mel Robbins, has more structure than your standard planner — it asks you to fill in everything from your most important project of the day to what time you plan to stop working (to prevent burnout). There is also a small hour-by-hour planner to help you map your schedule more comprehensively and a gridded space meant for jotting down ideas. “For the aspiring planner who has no idea where to begin, I recommend the 5 Second Journal,” says life and career coach Phoebe Gavin .

Best refillable daily planner

Layout: Daily | Size: 5.5 by 8.5 inches | Cover: Leather cover

For a tried-and-true option, try the Day-Timer. Christy Whitman , a life coach and the author of The Art of Having It All: A Woman’s Guide to Unlimited Abundance , has been using the Day-Timer for more than 20 years. “I love this brand because the layout of the pages allows me to have a place for the items to be done today, a schedule, and also a page for writing and taking notes. So each day is on two pages and gives me a full look at my day,” she says. “If I have an appointment scheduled, I can write notes next to the appointment and remind myself of call-in information, the name of the person, or any other important information.” Whitman also loves Day-Timer’s customer service, specifically the reminders to get new pages for the New Year. “They send me an email with the order number, refill numbers, and it is just easy for busy career people.”

Best monthly planners

Best monthly planner overall.

Layout: Monthly | Size: 3.5 by 6 inches | Cover: Softcover

This monthly at-a-glance planner has a super-specific prompt: It asks you to write down the single-most-important thing each day. At the end of the two years it spans, you’ll have a record of all the most essential things you did for those 730 days. “If you’re a big-picture thinker, you’ve built a successful life ignoring anything that does not help meet your grand vision,” says career counselor Penelope Trunk . “But there are some things that cannot be ignored, like calling your mom on her birthday.”

Best binder-style monthly planner

Layout: Monthly | Size: 8 by 9 inches | Cover: Hardcover

Binder-style planners, like this one, have loose pages which can be removed and rearranged if necessary, so they grant a lot of flexibility. Darcy Miller — an author, illustrator, and crafter with a meticulously organized office — uses it for her day-to-day notes and planning and even keeps one for each of her kids to keep track of things like doctor’s appointments and parent-teacher conferences. The eight-inch-by-nine-inch binder is small and light enough to fit in her bag, but when it’s not in there, it looks good if it’s out on the table.

Best quarterly planners

Best quarterly planner overall.

Layout: Quarterly | Size: 5.75 by 8.5 inches | Cover: Hardcover

While it may be more common to plan schedules by weeks, days, or months, planning in quarters can help organize big-picture goals. The BestSelf Co. Self Journal is one such planner that helps break down big goals into digestible 90-day chunks. “ A year is an intimidating thing to plan, but a month is too short for those big, exciting goals,” explains founder of content agency Prolifica Annie Mueller. “With quarterly goal planning, you can push for a goal that’s exciting and stay focused and see progress soon enough that you stay motivated.” Penny Zenker, a life coach, also likes the Self Journal: “I use this now because it is a comprehensive goal-setting-and-tracking system with reflection all in one. It helps me align my goals and my daily tasks, which makes me more productive.” Liz Sumner , a progress and life coach, adds that it combines the best parts of a journal and planner, encouraging reflection in addition to goal-setting.

One thing to note about this and all the quarterly planners on our list: Because they only cover three months at a time, you need to buy four to get through an entire calendar year. The upside of this system is that it offers a bit more flexibility because you can start using one at any point in the year.

Best softcover quarterly planner

Layout: Quarterly | Size: 5.75 by 8.5 inches | Cover: Softcover

The cool-looking Poketo is another quarterly planner with a bit more style. With this set of four, you’ll be covered for a full year no matter when you begin using them, though you can also buy them individually. Mueller calls it “the perfect way to schedule and track quarterly goals and sprints — for work, for your own personal goals, for family projects, for travel. It works for everything.” The planner makes it easy, she says, by “leading you through setting your quarterly goals, tracking monthly milestones, and following a weekly and daily action plan.”

Best hardcover quarterly planner

Layout: Quarterly | Size: 6.25 by 9.25 inches | Cover: Hardcover

Another quarterly option is the Full Focus planner by Michael Hyatt, which is also broken down into 90-day increments. While it lacks the journaling aspect of the Self Journal above, it is still great at keeping you focused. The reason it works so well, personal-brand expert Richard Janes explains, “is that the layout provides clear focus on what is important, while still enabling me to empty my head of all the other tasks that are lurking around. But it doesn’t go overboard so that I can easily get to the actual planning of my day, week, and month.”

Best customizable planners

Best customizable planner overall.

Layout: Customizable   

Golden Coil’s ring-bound planner allows you to customize pretty much everything about it from cover to cover (including its cover, which you can get in several colors and one of two materials: linen or leather). In addition to standard calendar pages, the brand offers themed layouts for wedding planning, wellness planning, recipe planning, and more. It’s another favorite of Hart-Unger, who told us the brand has “very elegant layouts and particularly luxurious paper.”

Best (less expensive) customizable planner

Layout: Customizable

Like Golden Coil’s planner, the Agendio is extremely customizable (but for half the price). That’s because the brand lets you choose between a daily, weekly, or monthly structure for the pages inside of the ring-bound planner. You can also customize the pages’ size and layout and add extras like tabs, elastics, and page markers. Folks can personalize it even further by noting dates for their own special events or activities. “If you can think of an option, Agendio probably has it,” Hart-Unger promises.

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Any planner can help keep your schedule organized , but the best productivity planners have the potential to help you track tasks and meet goals with efficiency, optimism, and purpose. These planners aim to help you translate your goals into weekly and daily to-dos — that way, when life gets busy, you can keep a handle on smaller action items without losing sight of the bigger picture.

Before you buy a productivity planner, you’ll need to decide how you intend to use the planner and whether you primarily need it for personal, business, or academic use. Most planners can be adapted in a variety of ways, but some have terminology and frameworks that might be best suited for a particular use case. For example, a planner that builds goals based on “quarters” might be better for an entrepreneur than someone planning personal projects. Also consider whether you want your planner to focus on daily tasks or extended goal-setting . Planners that span a full calendar year are typically better for tracking long-term goals and accomplishments; but if you’re looking for a more intensive planner that will help you get into the day-to-day nitty gritty of your busy schedule, a three-month option might be a better fit.

Look at how the daily schedules, or timelines, are laid out in each planner. Some of the timelines are centered around a 9-to-5 work schedule, but there’s one option with a 24-hour daily timeline, which might be best for students or people who work night shifts. Finally, take into consideration whether you’ll want to leave your planner at home or the office, or carry it around with you — some planners are smaller and more portable than others.

These are the best productivity planners to help you accomplish your goals, both large and small. All of these options are undated, which means they’re as useful and effective in April or October as they are in January.

1 The Best Overall Productivity Planner: Panda Planner Weekly

Panda Planner is best known for its daily planners, but the newer Panda Planner Weekly is great for anyone who needs to add structure to their days without getting caught in the weeds. Like the daily Panda Planner (which is available in small and large versions), this weekly planner reiterates your priorities across weekly and monthly sections. I’ve used Panda Planners before and find that the repetition of goals can really keep you on track. There’s room to set positive habit goals over time as well.

The Panda Planner Weekly includes 52 weekly planning pages and 12 monthly planning pages, which means it's a productivity planner that can last you an entire year. Even though it’s a weekly planner, it builds daily positivity-focused morning and evening routines into the weekly planning pages so you'll refer to it at least twice a day — chances are, though, you’ll want to keep it on hand all day if you use the daily timeline, which spans from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., for scheduling.

The weekly Panda Planner is 8.5 inches by 11 inches and not the easiest planner to carry around; if you're looking for something more portable, consider the 5.25-inch-by-8.25-inch daily Panda Planner or one of the smaller planners below instead.

According to one reviewer : “Hands down, my fave planner is the Panda Planner Weekly. Believe me, I've tried a few and looked through many. What drew me to this planner was a place to see my week at large while providing a journal/reflection page and also a page to keep track of goals, boxes for my projects, wins and improvements.

The concept of starting with gratitude and reviewing my week in advance really help bring peace to my brain. I need a place to dump my brain, a place to map out my steps, and a place to put my ‘atta girl!’ wins. I look forward to re-ordering every year. Thanks team Panda Planner!”

2 Editor’s Choice: Roterunner Undated Purpose Planner

While each person’s needs vary, I will say: I’ve tried many planners, and this is the one I’ve gotten the most out of. I’m on my fourth Roterunner planner , and at this point I can’t imagine not having one on hand anymore. I really love the weekly layout and its emphasis on looking at all aspects of your daily routine, both work and personal. It has space to do everything from track how much water you drink each day to examine the various roles you play in different areas of your life. Plus, monthly and annual views help you zoom out and look at the big picture, and grid pages between each weekly spread give you plenty of room to jot down notes, make lists, or simply doodle.

The Roterunner planner spans six-month spans and measures 7.8 by 9.8 inches. This version has a soft faux-leather cover, but you can also snag it in a hardcover version.

According to one reviewer : “This planner has helped me to juggle many different things during this season of my life. It has definitely increased my productivity and I will keep using this system. Great investment and good quality.”

3 The Best Budget Productivity Planner: Papercode Simple Elephant Daily Planner

If you're on a budget and/or you've never used a productivity planner, the Papercode Daily Planner is a fantastic place to start. It's essentially a pared-down version of a productivity planner that offers the opportunity to try out setting goals and reflecting on your week before committing to a pricier, more involved planner. It doesn't contain a daily timeline, so you can't precisely schedule out each hour of your day, but its 52 weekly pages and 12 monthly pages provide plenty of space to plot out monthly and weekly goals, celebrate personal wins, and identify areas of improvement. It even has separate sections to create a mind map or vision board to keep you inspired.

It’s larger than the other options listed at 5.9 inches wide and 8.3 inches tall, and is replete with paper that reviewers have attested takes well to pens and markers alike. One reviewer wrote, “The paper is thick and will not bleed through.” Shop it in four different colors, including this cobalt blue.

According to one reviewer : “This planner is everything I wanted it to be. Great quality for an amazing price! I love that [it] is undated so I can make it what I need it to be. I didn’t realize when I ordered that it had so many pages for notes in the back either.”

4 The Best Productivity Planner For Daily Goals: BestSelf Co. Self Journal

The BestSelf Co. Self Journal is the ideal option for setting goals and recording notes on a daily basis. In addition to weekly and monthly planning pages, the 90-day planner contains daily pages with a 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. timeline. It is designed to be used in a 13-week sprint, working toward one overarching goal (which can be anything you want), but it's as useful for daily planning as it is for achieving larger goals.

The Self Journal is a bit more focused on inspiration than many other planners and includes elements such as motivational quotes, gratitude journaling, reflection on joyful moments, and goal and habit trackers. Measuring 5.8 by 8.5 inches, it is relatively small in size and very portable.

According to one reviewer : “This journal is AMAZING! Just in the week or so I've had it, it has really helped keep me accountable to my goals and what I need to do each day. Love that it has a habit tracker where you can check off if you completed a task that day. Really helps you visualize your progress and where you can improve. Would highly recommend this to anyone looking to improve their productivity and reach their goals!”

5 The Best Productivity Planner For Long-Term Goals: Legend Planner

The Legend Planner can help you translate your longest-term goals into achievable weekly to-dos. It’s designed with a section dedicated to your one-year goals, which you can break down into actionable steps in the quarterly, monthly, and weekly planning pages in the 12-month planner. There’s also plenty of room to list your daily to-dos and schedule within the same pages. At the end of each month, you’ll find a page where you can reflect on wins and points of improvement. The planner also includes a section to list down your life goals and dreams, and another with reflective prompts that help you develop a deeper sense of self-awareness and gain crystal clarity on your vision. At 5.5 by 8.3 inches, the Legend Planner is very portable yet still provides ample room to jot down your goals and dreams. Plus, it comes in 19 different colors.

According to one reviewer : “There are so many pages and places for building your life through identifying values, dreaming, setting goals, and listing tactics to accomplish those goals. I love that it is thorough in organizing the mind and that it fits in my purse!”

6 The Best Business Productivity Planner: Full Focus Planner By Michael Hyatt

Created by an entrepreneur and former CEO, the 90-day Full Focus Planner by Michael Hyatt is rooted in fiscal quarters, making it a good option for entrepreneurs and business-minded people. In addition to goal-planning and accomplishment recaps, it includes daily Workday Startup (and Shutdown) Rituals and weekly Action Reviews for you to designate the specific status of your projects. Its two-page daily spreads give you lots of space to break down your busy day — you'll find a 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily timeline with space on either side for other commitments — and write notes. And you'll be sure to keep your eye on the prize with the end-of-quarter countdown on each daily planning page.

This planner is undated, but you'll get the most out of it if you start it at the beginning of a quarter. It is 6.3 inches by 9.3 inches.

According to one reviewer : “I love this planner! Its format is very clear and organized while at the same time incorporating many ways to record and track different things. I also love the quotes on every page! Some are inspiring, some are heartwarming, and some just make me laugh! [...] I'm on my 3rd Full Focus Planner and it has definitely helped me become more organized, get more things done, and move toward my goals with more ease. I recommend this planner 100%”

7 The Best Academic Productivity Planner: Power Place Non-Dated Personal Daily Planner

This 140-day undated daily planner will appeal to students who want to squeeze the most out of their hectic, inconsistent schedules. Its layout is uncluttered and offers users plenty of space to customize the planner. It includes daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly planning pages, and the 24-hour daily timeline easily organizes changing class schedules, extracurriculars, and social commitments.

It comes in five different colors and its small size (5.5 inches by 8.5 inches) makes it easy to carry to class and back home again. The planner will last for over four months if used every day of the week, so you may need to get one planner per semester if you're using it Monday through Sunday.

It's also a good fit for people who work night shifts or have unpredictable hours and need a full 24-hour timeline in their planners, according to one Amazon reviewer.

According to one reviewer : “I’m using this for my senior year of college and for student teaching! I have so much going on and this planner is perfect! Theres a level of personalization that makes it super easy to add my own spin to it. Also its is compact and easy to carry in my bag. However the unique way there is a weekly and a daily part gives A TON of room to right everything down!!! So happy with this planner!!!”

This article was originally published on November 17, 2019

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Some people venture into entrepreneurship with a clear vision: They know what industry they want to conquer and the path they’re going to take to get there. However, for many new entrepreneurs, it can be difficult to figure out how to start a business — plus, determine exactly what type of business is the best choice to invest in.

To help you launch your journey, we’ve compiled a list of the most profitable businesses, considering factors such as industry growth and competitiveness, startup costs and barriers to entry, as well as profitability potential.

LLC Formation

Most profitable small businesses

With a solid business plan, hard work and determination, any strong business idea may become successful and profitable.

Businesses in high-growth industries with lower startup costs , however, may have greater profitability potential. With the rise of technology, for instance, you’ll probably have more success starting a virtual assistant business than opening a grocery store.

Although some of the most profitable businesses are based online, others involve in-person services, and some are a great fit if you're an entrepreneur on the go. Here’s our list of the most profitable small businesses:

1. Food trucks

The food truck movement has been experiencing consistent growth over the past five years — and it’s expected to continue — with the market projected to grow to $6.87 billion by 2029, according to a 2023 report by Mordor Intelligence [0] Mordor Intelligence . Food Truck Market Size & Share Analysis . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . You can start a food truck business for less than a third of what it costs to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant; plus, you have geographic versatility, the potential for high revenue returns and the flexibility to create a custom menu that’s all your own.

Keep in mind that bigger, trendier cities like San Francisco, Boston and Washington, D.C., already have a pretty saturated food truck market (as well as tougher regulations to get started) — so this might be a more successful business in a smaller heartland metropolis.

Food trucks have their own special set of ordinances, business licenses and safety compliance standards. They also require food business insurance , so you’ll want to contact your local health department to find out what will be required.

» MORE: Best options for food truck financing

2. Car wash services

The rising prices and pandemic-induced shortage of new vehicles are causing car owners to keep their cars longer. And as drivers keep their cars longer, businesses like car washes that help people maintain the value of their auto investment are expected to keep rising as well.

In fact, the car wash market is projected to increase from $15.86 billion in 2023 to $23.79 billion by 2030 [0] Grand View Research . U.S. Car Wash Services Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Type . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . And according to a 2023 study from the International Carwash Association, 96% of U.S. car owners and lessees washed their vehicle at least once in the previous year— and 89% did so at a professional car wash [0] International Carwash Association . 6 Insights into Why Car Washing Is at an All-Time High . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

You might make a car wash business even more profitable by turning it into a mobile service. Customers may pay more for a car wash that comes to them, especially if they have a luxury car and prefer a more personalized service. And as a mobile car wash and auto detailing service, you’d avoid the overhead and startup costs of having a physical location.

3. Auto repair

The average age of cars and light trucks in the U.S. rose to 12.5 years in 2023, increasing from 9.7 years a decade ago, according to S&P Global Mobility [0] S&P Global Mobility . Average Age of Light Vehicles in the US Hits Record High 12.5 years, according to S&P Global Mobility . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . People are keeping their cars longer than ever, suggesting there’s significant opportunity in the maintenance and repair business.

Additionally, car owners are more likely to visit a small business for repairs. According to the Auto Care Association, more than 70% of repair business is captured by independent repair facilities compared with dealerships or manufacturer-authorized repair facilities [0] Auto Care Association . Auto Care Association Applauds Advancement of REPAIR Act . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

If you’re skilled as a mechanic, you might consider an auto repair service as one of the most profitable business ideas. You can offer oil changes, fluid refills, battery swaps, headlight repair and more. And if you’re looking to save on overhead costs, you might make it a mobile service and travel to your customers, performing repairs in their driveway or office parking lot.

4. Personal trainers

Employment of fitness trainers and instructors is projected to grow 14% from 2022 to 2032, much faster than the average for all occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [0] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . Occupational Outlook Handbook, Fitness Trainers and Instructors . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . But turning your love of fitness into a career doesn’t have to mean working for a big corporate gym — nor do you need the overhead of having your own location to train clients.

Throw a few weights, bands and yoga mats into the trunk of your car, and take your fitness show on the road.

You can become a personal trainer by offering one-on-one sessions in your clients’ homes or advertising group classes at a local park or community center. Making fitness more available to your clients might just be the ticket to helping both of you achieve your goals.

» MORE: Best mobile business ideas for on-the-go entrepreneurs

5. Newborn and post-pregnancy services

Although millennials and Generation Z are deferring parenthood for longer than previous generations, many do eventually want to have kids.

And with both generations considering parenthood, the need for child-oriented businesses is growing, starting with post-pregnancy and newborn-related services. As a result, a 2024 Market Research Future report expects the global maternity care market to reach $106.6 billion by 2032 (up from $62.5 billion in 2023) [0] Market Research Future . Maternity & Personal Care Market Research Report . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

Demand for doulas and lactation consultants, in particular, has risen among new mothers, and both business options have relatively low overhead requirements beyond education and certification.

6. Enrichment activities for children

Shrinking budgets for education mean that both traditional academics and enrichment subjects like music, art and athletics often take a significant hit.

A successful business to start might be one that teaches enrichment activities to children. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, kids are more involved in extracurricular activities today than they were 20 years ago [0] U.S. Census Bureau . Children Continue to be More Involved in Some Extracurricular Activities . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . And some research indicates that approximately half of American parents spend more than $1,000 annually on their children’s activities [0] GoBankingRates . How To Afford $1,000 Worth of Kids Activities Per Year . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

You could launch a gymnastics center or music school, become a swimming instructor or kids’ yoga teacher, or focus on some other child-centered activity. If you have a skill that could be easily taught to young students, you might already have a profitable business in the making.

7. Mobile apps and entertainment for children

If your interests are in development and engineering, you might consider gearing your technology toward the youngest users. Research shows that demand for tablets, apps and mobile entertainment for children is on the rise — especially if those products are education-focused [0] Excellent Web World . Is The App Development Market For Kids Getting Bigger? . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

Do you have an idea for an educational app for children or parents? If so, now may be the time to move forward on your bright idea for the next generation and make this potentially profitable business a reality.

8. Shared accessories and attire

Sites like Rent the Runway and Gwynnie Bee have banked on the idea of the sharing economy — where we want and need to own less stuff, so instead, we share resources.

These companies offer borrowed or rented clothing and accessories at a fraction of their purchase prices, and because the same piece of inventory generates revenue multiple times, the profitability of these ventures can be significant. According to a 2023 study by the reselling platform ThredUp, the secondhand-clothing market is projected to nearly double by 2027 [0] ThredUp . thredUP’s 11th Annual Resale Report Reveals Consumers Continue to Embrace Secondhand Amid Economic Uncertainty . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

Do you have an eye for fashion and a sense of style not currently offered by other rental services? Maybe you’re ready to be the next big thing.

Even if you’re not prepared to launch a multimillion-dollar fashion startup, you can just as easily profit from shared fashion at the local level. Gather some favorite accessories or clothing picks and host a borrowing party — where customers can rent or purchase items from your closet — for high school students before the next formal dance.

If you’re in a college town, Greek life formals are another great opportunity to profit from shared economy fashion. And because you’re taking shipping costs out of the equation, you have the potential to be even more profitable.

9. Shared home improvement equipment

Are you the go-to person in your neighborhood for every lawn, garden and home repair tool? Why not turn those tools into a profitable business by advertising your available equipment beyond your immediate friend group?

You might even decide to invest in more specialized and higher-cost equipment that would be useful to those around you. And if a customer doesn’t know how to use a specific tool, combine equipment rental with your mobile service for even more cash in the bank.

Home improvement spending has increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and U.S. households spent an average of $13,667 on improvement projects in 2023 alone, according to a study from Angi, a home services marketplace [0] Angi . State of Home Spending . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . As more people continue to invest in fixer-upper houses and remodel, this could be a big opportunity.

» MORE: Best small-town business ideas

10. Vacation rentals

If you live in a highly desirable tourist destination, you can make a profit renting space in your home to travelers. Sites like Airbnb or VRBO have made it easier than ever to profit from your unused vacation property — or even your extra bedroom. According to Airbnb, the typical U.S. host makes approximately $14,000 a year [0] Airbnb . Hosts in the US earned $22 billion in supplemental income last year . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

It's not too difficult to become an Airbnb host , and the demand for these types of rentals has only grown in recent years. In 2022, 394 million nights and experiences were booked on Airbnb — up from 301 million nights in 2021 [0] Statista . Airbnb Bookings Already Past Pre-Pandemic High in 2023 . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . However, some cities have laws and regulations regarding Airbnb and other rental platforms, so you’ll want to make sure you check the guidelines in your area before getting started.

11. Electronics repair

According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2023, 90% of Americans own a smartphone [0] Pew Research Center . Mobile Fact Sheet . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources , and 80% of U.S. adults subscribe to high-speed internet at home [0] Pew Research Center . Americans’ Use of Mobile Technology and Home Broadband . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . And with more employees working from home, there’s an even greater reliance on a variety of electronics.

That means that when something goes wrong, people want help fixing it as soon as possible. This makes electronics repair a potentially lucrative business idea. According to a 2024 report from the Business Research Company, the global electronics repair and maintenance market is expected to grow from about $8.69 billion in 2022 to $9.88 billion in 2028 [0] The Business Research Company . Consumer Electronics Repair and Maintenance Global Market Report 2024 . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

With this service, you could be the solution for every broken iPhone screen, Wi-Fi card and laptop battery. And you might be even more successful if you’re willing to travel to your customer. Apple stores and other electronics retailers have come under fire over the past few years for long customer wait times, which could work in favor of mobile providers.

Although a mobile electronics repair business involves some overhead in the form of purchasing supplies, being mobile saves you from having to pay the costs associated with a physical location.

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12. Academics courses

Online entrepreneurs can offer courses through educational platforms or independently on their own websites. The U.S. e-learning market has accelerated growth since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and is predicted to reach nearly $170 billion in 2030, according to a 2023 report by Renub Research [0] Renub Research . United States eLearning Market, Size, Forecast 2023-2030 . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

You might start your business by providing courses in traditional academics, offering online instruction in grade-level reading, math, science, history or standardized test preparation. You could even create a review course for parents helping teens with their algebra homework. If you’re creative, the possibilities are truly endless.

And academic courses don’t have to end at the high school or even college level. You can create an online course to share your love of political history, Buddhist theology or rocket science. If you’re interested in a particular subject, chances are someone else is, too.

13. Language courses

Currently, one-fifth of U.S. families speak one other language, apart from English — based on data from the Census Bureau [0] U.S. Census Bureau . What Languages Do We Speak in the United States? . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . And with more languages being spoken nationwide, the demand for online language learning courses is growing. The market is projected to increase by $26.33 billion from 2023 to 2030, according to a 2023 report from Verified Market Research [0] Verified Market Research . Online Language Learning Market Size And Forecast . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

So whether you take to the online education space with expertise in English, or you harness your mastery of Swahili, there’s likely someone out there who wants to learn a language from you.

And if you speak one of the most in-demand languages, such as Mandarin, Spanish or Arabic, then online-based language courses could be one of your most profitable business ideas.

» MORE: Easy online business ideas you can start now

14. Business or marketing courses

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, participation in career-focused online courses has grown significantly, especially as more employees look to change jobs or work from home. For instance, education technology platform Udemy gained 10 million new global learners from 2022 to 2023, spanning 134 million course enrollments [0] Udemy Business . 2024 Global Learning & Skills Trends Report . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

Companies have expanded or launched new coverage for tuition reimbursement in recent years, meaning workers have money to spend on these types of classes. According to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2023 Employee Benefits Survey, 48% of employers offer tuition assistance, 87% cover costs for professional memberships and 78% pay for employees’ certifications or recertifications [0] Society for Human Resource Management . SHRM Releases 2023 Employee Benefits Survey Results . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

If you have career skills to share, you can start creating online courses with few initial costs. Popular course topics include bookkeeping, QuickBooks accounting software , WordPress web development, graphic design or even how to write a great cover letter or resume.

15. Personal wellness

Are you a therapist or counselor, a yoga instructor, a life coach or a longtime meditator? If you have a deep passion for personal wellness, you might be able to help others — while also earning a significant income.

For example, a report from the Yoga Alliance found 38.4 million Americans (11% of the population) practiced yoga in 2022; up 4.6% from 2016. These Americans spent over $21 billion on yoga in 2022 alone [0] Yoga Alliance . Yoga in the World . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . And a Grand View Research report predicts the North American yoga market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.8% by 2030 [0] Grand View Research . Yoga Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

Like many of the options on our list, as long as you have the knowledge, the costs to start a personal wellness business are low.

Every person has a desire to better themselves, and that’s what online courses are all about. If you have this expertise to share, you could turn your knowledge into a profitable business.

16. Courses in hobbies or interests

While many courses are designed to further an education or career prospects or to promote major life changes, you can just as easily design an online course around any hobby or interest.

Do you have a passion for calligraphy or craft brewing ? Have you mastered a certain video game? You'd be surprised at the number of people willing to pay to learn about topics they're interested in. Some of the bestselling courses on the popular online learning platform Udemy include web development, digital marketing, ethical hacking, stock trading and WordPress — and they sell for up to $200 per class [0] Udemy . Popular and trending topics . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

Not sure how to start designing your own online course? Well, there are even online courses for creating your own online course. You can use one of these courses to propel your own online course business.

17. Bookkeeping and accounting

Accounting and bookkeeping are unavoidable requirements of business ownership. But for many entrepreneurs, money management is the most tedious part of owning a business; that's why some business owners choose accounting and bookkeeping services to outsource those tasks.

Whether you’re a certified public accountant or just a QuickBooks wizard, you might be the perfect candidate to launch your own bookkeeping business . With accounting firms seeing a growth rate of 9.1% in net revenue from 2021 to 2022 (up from a 4.2% growth rate in 2020), bookkeeping, accounting, tax preparation and payroll services have long been some of the most profitable businesses for entrepreneurs [0] Association of International Certified Professional Accountants . U.S. Accounting Firms Show Strong Growth in Profit and Revenue, AICPA & CIMA Research Finds . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

As a bookkeeper, you can process invoices and payroll, compile expense reports and more. If you have a CPA license, you can help business owners file taxes, generate balance sheets and other accounting documents, as well as make professional recommendations about your client’s bottom line.

18. Consulting

If you’ve been in the business world for a long time, folks may be clamoring for your knowledge and expertise within your industry. Why not turn all that know-how into a new career as an independent consultant?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand for consulting services is expected to increase, particularly among smaller companies that deal in specialized industries or business functions. Employment of management analysts, which includes consultants across different industries, is projected to grow 10% from 2022 to 2032 — faster than average for all occupations [0] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . Occupational Outlook Handbook, Management Analysts . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

As an independent consultant, you can be paid to speak at industry conferences or events, serve on a board of advisors for a fledgling business, or lend your expertise to shape the strategy of an existing business on a contract basis.

Whatever your skill set, starting a consulting business is a great way to make the income of your dreams while working on your own terms.

» MORE: 145 new service business ideas

19. IT support

Our reliance on technology makes IT support just as profitable a business idea as electronics repair and other tech businesses — especially considering employment of IT professionals is projected to grow 5% from 2022 to 2032, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics [0] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . ccupational Outlook Handbook, Computer Support Specialists . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . With an IT business, you can help customers when they have issues with their internet or computer software, as well as install security programs and network updates.

If technology comes easily to you — and you’re a relatively patient person — then the most profitable business for you might be hitting the road, at least in your neighborhood, with mobile IT support. You can offer a service to combat the chat or phone support typically offered by technology manufacturers, which often includes long wait times and leaves customers with unanswered questions.

All you need is time, transportation and your own know-how, so this low-overhead business model could be almost pure profit.

20. Graphic design

As the number of brands vying for consumers’ attention grows, a slick and polished image has become more important than ever for small businesses.

And although, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment for graphic designers is expected to grow only 3% from 2022 to 2032, there are opportunities out there, especially for graphic designers who are self-employed [0] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . Occupational Outlook Handbook, Graphic Designers . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . The BLS says most graphic designers are self-employed, compared to those that work for advertising services, publishing industries and similar employers.

Do you know your way around Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign? Have you taken a few design classes, and do you have an eye for good branding? Turn your skills into a business as a freelance graphic designer. You’ll have almost no overhead and can help small-business owners create awesome marketing graphics.

21. Social media management

These days, customers expect a business to have a strong social media presence and to be responsive to customer service issues on social media.

Although many small-business owners know they need to engage in social media marketing, few have the necessary time or expertise to manage all of their social media accounts.

If you’re fluent in Twitter, live your life on Facebook and have gotten every job you’ve ever had through LinkedIn, you might consider turning your social media expertise into your own solopreneur business venture — offering support to business owners who need help managing their brands' social media platforms.

As long as you have your own laptop, smartphone and social media accounts, there are few costs to getting started, and job growth in the industry is projected to increase 6% from 2022 to 2032 — faster than average for all other occupations [0] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . Occupational Outlook Handbook, Public Relations Specialists . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

22. Marketing copywriter

If you’re particularly adept with words, you can use your talents to write copy for various companies’ marketing efforts. According to an Industry Research report, the global digital content creation market is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 9.5% from 2023 to 2030 [0] Industry Research . Digital Content Creation Market 2023-2030: Trends, Size, Share, and CAGR Status . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources .

Whether you’re coining a catchy slogan or writing an in-depth description of a company’s offerings, if you’re doing it as an independent contractor, you’ll have very few startup costs. Once you get started and build relationships with clients, you’ll quickly be able to earn a profit for your services.

23. Virtual assistant services

With more employees working from home, and with teams spread out across different locations and time zones, businesses can benefit from an assistant who is just as flexible as they are. There's no longer the need to meet with a client every day in an office — you can work as an assistant from New York when your client lives in Florida.

According to ZipRecruiter, the average remote virtual assistant in the U.S. makes $50,749 a year [0] ZipRecruiter . Remote Virtual Assistant Salary . Accessed Feb 26, 2024. View all sources . As a virtual assistant , you can choose your clients and create your own schedule, managing emails, scheduling meetings, booking travel and completing other basic tasks to make your customers’ lives and businesses run more smoothly.

Plus, all you need is a laptop and an internet connection to start this business.

How to start a profitable business

These ideas for profitable businesses span a variety of industries and involve varying time commitments and startup costs. Before you can earn any profit, however, you’ve got to get your business off the ground.

Here are three steps to help you get started:

1. Do your research

Whether you choose one of the ideas here or come up with something on your own, do your research before committing to any concept. You'll want to perform idea validation, a process that involves market and competitor research, as well as a financial feasibility analysis to help test your business idea and determine whether you want to move forward with your business proposal.

2. Get organized and make it official

Once you’ve chosen a strong business idea, you’re ready to create a thorough business plan . Your business plan will outline your company’s goals — and how you’ll achieve them — as well as provide a roadmap for you (and potential investors) to follow for the next three to five years.

After you’ve written your business plan, you can take the necessary steps to make your small business official. You’ll choose a business structure, apply for an employer identification number , register your “Doing Business As” name (if necessary) and get the business licenses and registrations you need to open your doors.

» MORE: Important legal requirements for starting a small business

3. Find the right financing

It can be difficult for startups to qualify for some traditional business loans, as they often require multiple years of business history for approval. Instead, new business owners might consider startup funding options, such as microloans, grants, crowdfunding, or asking friends or family for an investment.

Business credit cards are also an option for short-term financing, especially for everyday business purchases. With a business credit card , you can earn perks and rewards on your spending, as well as start building a business credit history.

See how to get your business started quickly

Find the money to get going: Compare the best small-business loan options right now.

Set up a bank account: Details on how to get a free business checking account .

Start accepting credit cards and other payments: Options and how to use point-of-sale systems .

Start tracking your profits: Pick out and set up simple accounting software .

A version of this article originally appeared on JustBusiness, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.

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Disappointing that I can’t get a hard copy in Canada. 😔

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is there an option to order the digital 2024 planner to test it out? I saw at as an add-on but would just like to try this out first.

Thank you for all the information.

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10 Genius Planners That Will Help You Get Organized This Year

Make 2022 your best year yet with a new agenda.

Our editors handpick the products that we feature. We may earn commission from the links on this page.

We may already be three months into the new year, but it's never too late to pick up a new planner or journal to help you feel more grounded, organized, and orderly. The meaning of the word plan is a “level or flat surface,” so think of a planner as your foundation and blueprint for how you want the rest of your 2022 to go. It's time to step away from your phone's calendar app and put these actions, activities, and desires into a brand new planner.

There are a myriad of planners to choose from, and as you find the right planner for you, make sure you consider the time frame, aesthetic, and size of your purchase. Do you want a compact quarterly planner you can carry in your handbag? Are you looking for a super-stylish and large daily planner that will live at your desk? Or are you looking for an inspiring journal with weekly writing prompts and thought-starters that can help you live your best life? No matter what your planner preferences are, we have a chic and functional version just for you.

Whether you're hoping to reorganize your day-to-day tasks and responsibilities or want to refresh your paper products for spring, we have rounded up our must-have picks for the best planners of the year here.

Oprah’s The Life You Want™ Planner

We may be biased, but this five-star reviewed planner is everything you would expect from the world of Oprah, all bundled into one inspiring book. This one is for far more than just keeping dates and deadlines handy–our planner asks you to create your very own vision statement for the year ahead. Inside the planner, you will find monthly and weekly calendars alongside writing prompts, weekly reflection pages, and motivating quotes from wisdom keepers. If you're ready to make living well a daily habit, this is the planner for you.

Origin Company The Do Less Planner

Based on science, and filled with soul, the undated planner helps you craft your “to-do” list based on how you feel in order to maximize efforts and achieve more by, ironically, doing less. It's both a lifestyle and a planner, complete with sacred practice reminders, daily energy trackers, and seasonal reflection pages. This planner also helps you track moon and menstrual cycles, so you can align with the natural rhythms of mother nature and begin to notice and work according to the ebbs and flows of your body’s energy and creativity.

Be Rooted Daily Undated Planner

We are big fans of Be Rooted’s gorgeous line of journals, and this collab with illustrator Melissa Koby is everything we want in a planner this year! This spiral-bound and vegan-leather planner is undated so you can work at your own pace. Features include a calendar, space for notes, tasks, and a spot to list your top three priorities so you know where to focus your day. We also love the smart reminders for meal planning and staying hydrated.

Hija de tu Madre Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana Weekly Planner

This planner captures the mood of 2022 with its title, which translates to: "I do what I want." We love the bilingual inspirational quotes from trailblazers like Frida Kahlo and Maya Angelou and the playful mood stickers and coloring pages. The planner is filled with affirmations, wellness worksheets, and a list of Latinx holidays, from Selena’s birthday to National Taco Day. It's a fun planner that brings much-needed joy and empowerment into our year.

Simple Self Daily Planner in Blush

With hundreds of five-star reviews, this is one of the most popular planners on the market, offering a concrete, measurable way to balance work and life. Inside the serene, spiral-bound planner, you’ll find schedules and to-do lists alongside spaces for gratitude, inspirational quotes, self-care challenges. The planner also has places to track your mood, sleep, water intake, and movement. The planner comes in a variety of colors, and in a daily or weekly time frame.

Poketo Quarterly Goal Planner

For many people, 90 days or a complete season is the perfect amount of time to focus on and achieve goals. This stylish planner, from design-conscious lifestyle brand Poketo, offers goal-setting pages to get you started. Features include daily recaps like a “victory you claimed” or a “hurdle you encountered” so you can honestly assess and process your day. The planner is undated so you can skip a week if life happens, and it's available in four vibrant colors.

Minted Personalizable Planner

This bright-yellow planner from Minted is a go-to tool for staying active and organized. All Minted notebooks are designed by a diverse community of independent artists, which makes each creation special. These planners are undated, so they can be used weekly or monthly at your preferred pace. With smart details and fun stickers, the eye-catching planner is customizable with photos and text, making it the ideal gift.

Publishing Zone See It Bigger Monthly Planner 2022-2023

This bestselling planner can truly do it all: Not only does it map out every month between now and December 2023, but it also has pages to house important dates, your contacts, passwords, and space to take quarterly reviews, which are dedicated to setting goals for the future. Even better: This pick is a great deal for the price.

Shinola 2022 12-Month Runwell Planner

Between the sleek, all-black exterior and the smart format, this Shinola seamlessly combines function and style. Inside, you'll find a monthly view of what's ahead, plus weekly breakdowns for organized planning, noteworthy historical facts, and information on moon phases over time. Reviewers also commented on the durable build of this 60-page planner, making it the perfect pick for the person on the go.

Barnes & Noble 2022-2023 Monthly Planner: 2-Year Calendar

This floral-covered planner stands the test of time: It features 24 months total, so you can easily make plans through December 2023. Not only will you find monthly glances for an overview of your upcoming commitments, but this hardcover planner also has regular moments of reflection with prompts that ask you to celebrate achievements, learn from challenges, and stay on track for future goals.

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Inside the Plan To Save Denver’s Central Business District

After Mayor Mike Johnston laid out his plan to revitalize downtown Denver, our reporter spent 18 consecutive hours in Union Station to better understand the post-pandemic obstacles the Mile High City still faces.

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As the A-line from Denver International Airport pulls into Union Station, the train’s cars screech and shudder to a stop. The brakes’ sharp hiss echoes off the glass-and-concrete buildings overlooking the platform. Train doors open simultaneously, and a phalanx of passengers step into the sunlight.

It’s 7:04 a.m. on Thursday, June 13, and Union Station is one of downtown Denver’s liveliest spots. Morning travelers and office workers line up at Pigtrain Coffee Co. to order cappuccinos and vanilla lattes. The concierge at the $500-a-night Crawford Hotel waits expectantly at the front desk inside the station’s Great Hall. A security guard holds the door for an elderly couple heading to the trains.

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Bethani Wells walks across the station’s concrete platform with her roller bag. A former Denverite, the 29-year-old left with her now husband for West Palm Beach, Florida, during the pandemic and hadn’t been back for a couple of years. During her time away, she’d heard about the post-COVID-19 troubles in Denver that had also taken hold in so many American cities: rising crime, homelessness, closed businesses, and opioid misuse. Despite then Mayor Michael Hancock’s optimistic outlook for the Mile High City (“ Denver’s reputation is one of never giving up ,” he wrote in the Denver Post in 2022), almost no one would deny that a malaise had overtaken the Mile High City’s downtown.

Wells planned to see friends and visit her old haunts: restaurants and apartments and familiar streets in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. For Wells, like many twentysomethings who settled in Denver after college, this was far more than a place to live—it represented a dream, a lifestyle, a city that would make visiting friends jealous. “It’s impossible not to love Denver,” she says.

I agree with Wells. I was raised in suburban Denver, went to high school here, got married here, and returned to my hometown, Parker, after college and a few jobs in different parts of the country. I’ve raised my children here and, since late 2000, have held jobs at the Denver Post , the Rocky Mountain News , and this magazine. I’ve seen the best and worst the city has to offer.

These days, it’s difficult to put a neat label on Denver. It’s true Denver will never be New York City or Los Angeles, both coastal, 24-hour cities; Denver is a so-called 18-hour city, a lively, midsize town with cultural amenities that rival larger urban centers and that typically runs from sunup until around midnight. Like many post-pandemic American cities today, it has tent encampments, late-night violence, and empty storefronts. On the other hand, the city has Michelin-starred restaurants , a jewel of a ballpark in Coors Field, hip bars , and an inviting anchor in Union Station , all nestled into LoDo, which has fared better than greater downtown since the end of the pandemic.

LoDo wasn’t always a booming part of downtown. The area started to flourish in the late 1990s and early aughts, but it was the redevelopment of Union Station in 2014 that spurred the full blossoming of the neighborhood. That is, in large part, why Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, in May, harked back to the successful overhaul of Union Station and laid out how a revamped Downtown Development Authority (DDA)—which was used to fund the Union Station renovation—could help bring all of downtown Denver out of its post-pandemic doldrums.

The mayor’s plan was met with cautious optimism, but I had a question. Could Union Station and LoDo really be a road map for the rest of the city center? To find out, I wanted to spend 18 hours—from 7 a.m. until 1 a.m.—wandering between Wynkoop and Grant streets to better understand the current state of downtown.

On that June morning, people with backpacks and leather satchels are carrying paper coffee cups as they walk past the fountain in front of the station. As Wells and I chat, she says her visit is a chance to collect some of her past, an opportunity to reacquaint herself with a place that might not be exactly as she remembered it. “This city was a great chapter in my life,” she tells me. She’d met her husband in Capitol Hill during the pandemic’s peak. She paused for a moment. “I hope there’s still something magical about it.”

A century and a half ago, Denver was also looking for a revamp. A frontier city built during Colorado’s gold rush, Denver’s post–Civil War population stagnated at about 4,500 residents as the lack of goldfield success led to hundreds of “gobacks,” as Rocky Mountain News publisher William Byers called those who returned home.

Denver was a dusty, inhospitable place. Homes and businesses periodically washed away in floods. Shanties popped up along streets, creating the city’s first slums. “[T]oo dead to bury,”  Thomas Durant, the Union Pacific Railroad vice president, declared of Denver in the 1860s.

When Cheyenne, Wyoming, was made a primary stop on the east-west rail line nearly a decade before Colorado’s statehood in 1876, Denver’s fate appeared sealed. Fearing financial ruin—and a further exodus that would decimate what remained of the community—residents banded together to fund a rail spur from Wyoming. The spur became a link for Denver and helped turn the city into a viable commercial epicenter at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

In time, hotels, mills, lumberyards, a brass foundry, and a cracker factory opened in what is now LoDo. Four railroad companies had offices in the city, and each had its own station, forcing travelers to traverse dusty or muddy roads to catch different trains. That began to change in 1880, when the city created plans to consolidate the stations into a single building at the corner of 17th and Wynkoop streets.

Union Depot, as it was called, would cost $525,000 (about $17 million today) and would house trains under a massive structure “of brick, with stone trimmings,” the Rocky Mountain News reported at the time. It would be a grand edifice: 180 feet tall, 500 feet long, and 60 feet wide, constructed in the High Victorian Eclectic style popularized in New York City in the mid- to late 1800s. Leading the development was William E. Taylor, a Kansas City architect. By June 1881, construction was complete: Denver now had the tallest building west of the Mississippi River and a hallmark development that helped legitimize the city.

On a gray morning this past May outside that building—renamed Union Station following a massive remodel in 1914 that created its celebrated central facade—Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, a Democrat, described the aftermath of post-pandemic American cities as a way to explain what had happened to one of the West’s great economic centers. “The COVID-19 pandemic left our downtowns deserted,” said Johnston, a former educator and state representative who’d won the mayoral election in summer 2023 . Work-from-home and hybrid work schedules reduced demands for commercial office space in downtown Denver. A domino effect ensued. Without foot traffic, many businesses struggled, and some closed permanently. Crime increased: Aggravated assaults in the Central Business District jumped 52 percent from 2018 to 2021. Burglaries nearly doubled during the same time period (but saw a substantial decrease in 2022). A “doom loop,” Johnston called it.

Although the city center is home to 40 percent of Denver’s jobs, post-pandemic visitor recovery rates in the urban core are among the lowest of the 26 largest downtowns in the country, according to a study from Philadelphia’s Center City District. Year-to-date sales of commercial properties in Denver are also below that of most major cities across the West. City subleases were up 53.7 percent, year over year, in December 2020—a sign that office tenants were already re-examining the need for physical space for workers.

Early this year, the Denver Post reported commercial vacancies downtown were at 31.5 percent—the highest level since the early 1990s oil bust. Avison Young, a global commercial real estate services firm with an office downtown, reported this summer that vacancy rates in the city continued to climb from previous months, most notably downtown. “I have six or seven tenants downtown, and all of them have given me a mandate that basically says, ‘We want out of here,’ ” says Howard Schmidt, an Avison Young vice president who expected a post-pandemic real estate rebound that has yet to materialize. “Everyone loves Denver,” he adds. “I figured people would be flocking back downtown. But that’s not been the case at all.”

These are strange times for a downtown that had been the envy of so many American cities for the previous decade. Cutting-edge companies such as Ibotta and Palantir Technologies located their headquarters in the city center as technology businesses challenged the oil and gas industry that had dominated downtown Denver development for generations. Construction cranes became fixtures on the skyline. There was arts and culture, locally made craft beer and spirits, banking and finance, professional sports, and outdoor recreation.

Nowhere was the city’s transformation more noticeable than at Union Station, whose $500 million renovation turned a nearly deserted building into a catalyst for development across LoDo. Much of the project’s funding came from the DDA, part of a Colorado statute that authorizes municipalities to collect a portion of incremental taxes within a designated development zone and reinvest that money into economic expansion within the same area.

The DDA that funded Union Station’s renewal began in 2008, becoming one of more than 20 DDAs across the state. In Denver, the DDA financed bonds that paid for part of the Union Station redevelopment, a project that included upgraded rail tracks and platforms, a new Regional Transportation District (RTD) bus depot, and preservation and renovations inside the existing historical building.

This was done through something known as Tax Increment Financing (TIF). A TIF doesn’t raise taxes but rather reallocates tax-revenue increases; in this case, the DDA allowed the city to borrow money to help fund the redevelopment based on the increase in future property and sales taxes the project was expected to generate. In other words, as the revamped Union Station increased economic activity, it generated more tax revenue. That money then was used to pay off the bonds.

The DDA encompassed the station and several blocks surrounding it and was a massive success. Tax revenue ended up being so much higher than projections that the TIF will pay off the $400 million in bonds this year, 14 years earlier than expected.

And so, as Johnston stood outside Union Station on that spring day, he unveiled a new plan for the city—an ambitious project called Vibrant Denver that would expand the original, now expiring DDA to the rest of downtown. From LoDo, through the city’s core, and all the way to the state Capitol, $500 million would be spent over the next 15 years as part of a massive, more-than-85-block transformation.

Using the station’s redevelopment as a road map, Johnston said, the revamped DDA would act as a multiplier of sorts to attract and aid privately funded projects, potentially delivering billions of dollars in additional investment. “Denver refuses to walk away from our downtown as the vibrant center of financial, cultural, social, athletic, and artistic activities,” the mayor said. Downtown Denver has been an economic driver for the rest of the city, which propelled the state’s fortunes and, by extension, helped determine the fate of the Rocky Mountain West. Said Johnston: “The economic recovery of 10 states starts in this neighborhood.”

On this June Thursday, the sidewalks around Union Station are lively and crowded. People in dress pants and button-down shirts brush past each other with their takeout lunches. A group of friends chat on concrete steps in front of the Wynkoop Brewery. The fountain splashes giggling children whose parents record the moment on their phones. Ubers and Lyfts line up along Wynkoop Street. A small party of travelers with suitcases walks up 17th Street to the Oxford Hotel.

As a whole, the city of Denver has relatively low rates of violent crime and one of the lower homicide rates, when compared with similarly sized cities. But since the pandemic, downtown has become notorious for crimes such as car break-ins, assaults, and public drug use. Data prove the reputation is earned. In June and July, there were at least five burglaries with forced entry in LoDo. Eight serious assaults were reported in an eight-day period throughout downtown in late June. There was an armed carjacking during the day on June 30, and two people were shot two blocks from Union Station in early July.

The idea that such a vibrant neighborhood can feel so unmoored at times is a contradiction that’s difficult for even longtime residents to comprehend. “You get a beautiful summer evening when there’s a game at Coors Field and people are on restaurant patios with friends and you can’t think of a better place,” says Lynda “Elle” Baker, 57, a former salon owner who lives in the Ice House Lofts next to Union Station and serves on the homeowners’ association board. “A few nights later, you’re dodging open-air drug users and wondering if anyone’s going to help if you’re attacked. Denver can be amazing and frustrating, sometimes in the same hour.”

Just before noon that day, I meet Andrew Mueller, an assistant professor at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business, for lunch at a restaurant near Track 7, behind Union Station. The area is teeming with activity. Downtown workers wander about. A group of women hug hello outside a newly arrived train, near a man experiencing homelessness who’s shading himself from the heat.

Mueller studies urban environments and development and how people interact within those things. Denver, like most cities, is a complicated place, he says. What’s unique to the Mile High City, however, is that its current predicament can be traced to development decisions that date back nearly 60 years.

In 1967, Denver voters overwhelmingly approved the Skyline Urban Renewal Project, a plan that demolished 120 acres of prime downtown real estate in favor of office towers and vast parking lots that accommodated workers who’d taken part in the flight to the suburbs over the previous decade. “The en vogue planning at the time was all about building skyscrapers and creating a city of the future,” Mueller says. More than 1,500 mostly poor downtown residents were displaced during the teardown, and many of those people ultimately found homes in public housing outside the city center. “Denver had these beautiful, old, five-story buildings everywhere, high density and good mixed-use,” Mueller says. “And then the city turned that into parking lots.”

Despite Union Station’s much-heralded 2014 renovation, other, more recent redevelopment projects haven’t gone particularly well. The 16th Street Mall—now undergoing a $170 million overhaul that has faced multiple delays—has been reimagined twice in the past two decades, but neither project has proved successful. Downtown’s Skyline Park, a modernist icon built in the early 1970s, fell into neglect and was remodeled in 2004 but continues to be a hub for drug use and people without housing. Part of the park today is cordoned off.

The idea behind the mayor’s DDA expansion proposal follows an emerging consensus around the United States that major cities can reinvent themselves by taking a page out of the old playbook—essentially, turning the city center back into a neighborhood where people want to spend time, regardless of where they might work. Case in point is LoDo. The neighborhood encapsulates the concept of the “work, live, play” ethos Johnston wants to expand to the rest of downtown, a sentiment repeated by nearly every politician, developer, and resident I spoke with for this story. “If you create a cool, safe, welcoming place people want to visit, then you’re creating a place where people are going to want to work, and then they’re going to start looking for a home,” says Susan Chong, a real estate agent who sells properties downtown and lives three blocks from Union Station. “It’s a pretty obvious solution.”

As the theory goes, a city center should have affordable residences filled with families, which then attract businesses like restaurants, daycare centers, and grocers. “If that can be the norm again in a place like Denver, then that’s a really exciting road map for the rest of the country,” Mueller says. In essence, the concept is a throwback to a time when store owners could live above their businesses, shop for daily staples, and go out to dinner all within a few blocks of home.

The question today is whether Denver can accomplish that vision. “We have to be optimistic about the possibilities,” Walter Isenberg, the president and CEO of the Sage Hospitality Group, told me later on that warm June day at the Oxford Hotel. Isenberg operates more than 90 hotels across the country, including four in LoDo. The Oxford—his crown jewel—has returned to its pre-pandemic numbers, he says, as have Sage’s three other hotels nearby. That Sage properties have lagged elsewhere is proof, Isenberg says, that the DDA that funded Union Station’s revitalization worked and can succeed as an expanded entity to drive other development in the city center. “People want to be in LoDo because there’s a high quality of life, there’s always something going on,” says Isenberg, who also helped create projects for both McGregor Square and the Dairy Block—two developments that are examples of modern, dense, mixed-use gathering spots in LoDo.

As part of a downtown revamp, he says, there needs to be an expansion and yet another remodel of Skyline Park. Abandoned ground-floor retail spaces throughout the city center need to be reoccupied. “And that’s going to take time, but it’s absolutely important. Energize the ground floors downtown, and you’re going to get residents and office tenants and visitors,” Isenberg says. “We need to look at this downturn as an opportunity to dig in and roll up our sleeves and say, ‘What should downtown be?’  ”

From his third-floor office at the City and County Building, the mayor can see the terminus of the future DDA, across East Colfax Avenue from Civic Center Park. Right now, it’s the yin to Union Station’s yang, an imperfect bookend. “Some cities are looking at these issues and saying the idea of downtowns is dead; it’s a 20th-century notion, and don’t try to revive it,” Johnston tells me. “We feel the opposite. We’re doubling down on the idea that downtowns can be vibrant and are a must for cities to survive.”

Along a wall near the mayor’s desk is an eight-foot-long map of the renovations along the 16th Street Mall. Before Union Station’s rebirth, the mall had been the centerpiece of a downtown that didn’t have much to offer residents, office workers, or visitors. It was, in many ways, downtown’s most distressed—and disappointing—asset. With the mall now scheduled to reopen next summer, Johnston believes it can be a lively spine that will link LoDo to the rest of downtown, a renewed commercial district where boutiques and big-box retailers and restaurants co-exist within a walkable 15-block stretch.

This is all critical to Johnston, who took office more than a year ago on a platform that emphasized safe streets and a promise to pull Denver out of its post-pandemic listlessness. In the first 10 months of his administration, more than 1,000 people previously experiencing homelessness in the city were moved to residences away from LoDo and the city center. “It’s like someone flipped the ‘on’ switch and gave us back part of the city,” says Chong, the real estate agent.

Johnston has now turned his attention to the DDA. Under Colorado statute, each of the state’s cities is allowed only one authority. “Downtown needs to be the economic priority for the city,” the mayor says. As Johnston tells it, Gretchen Hollrah, the city’s former deputy chief operating officer, brought the DDA expansion idea up in a meeting shortly after he took office. “I said, ‘This is brilliant,’ ” Johnston says. “Exactly what we’ve done for Union Station, we can do for all of downtown. This is our chance.”

The City Council could approve the DDA expansion as early as this fall. After that, the Denver Economic Development & Opportunity office will create guidelines for projects. The first funding tranche would follow, perhaps as early as next summer, though there are no concrete plans for spending the $500 million over the next 15 years. Johnston and others have mentioned the need to restructure Skyline Park and have visited Boston to study the ways it uses Boston Common to activate the neighborhoods surrounding the 50-acre public park.

Denver Councilman Chris Hinds, whose district encompasses the entirety of the proposed DDA, says there’s been zero opposition to the plan so far. “There’s a lot of excitement for this,” he says, adding that the biggest debates will center on which projects get funding. Hinds has already advocated for a 5.280-mile walking and biking path—dubbed the 5280 Trail—that connects Union Station, the Auraria Campus, the Golden Triangle, Capitol Hill, and other neighborhoods. The city has also extensively researched commercial-to-residential conversions on multiple buildings, paying for a study last year that singled out 16 structures downtown that have potential for residential conversions, most of them mid-rises that can offer enough interior natural light to make the projects viable.

This spring, members from the nonprofit Downtown Denver Partnership traveled to Calgary, which used a $200 million startup fund to offer developers sped-up approvals and square-footage incentives to convert empty offices into residential apartments. Thirteen conversion projects are active, and four others are in the pipeline—a project that will convert roughly 2.3 million square feet of space. Ultimately, the Canadian city wants its fund to spur another $1 billion in private investment.

Johnston believes an even larger multiplier could happen in Denver. “I think it’s very reasonable to say we can get two times, five times what the city’s going to put in it if we do this the right way,” he says. “We can help make the math work” for private investors. Johnston adds: “In a lot of these projects, we can be the placemaker. We can help create a public space that attracts commerce and business and residents. We can be a co-investor in a residential unit or in a new development. We can be a partner and make public dollars go further to give a broader sense of ownership.”

Schmidt, the Avison Young vice president who worries about the future of commercial space in the Central Business District, says he favors the DDA expansion, as do developers in the area. But, Schmidt adds, “I would like to know the details behind it, time frames, who’s accountable, who’s paying, and the benefits of doing it. So far, little has been shared.”

For the mayor’s part, he says the city’s urban core can’t survive with a bunch of one-bedroom apartments that cost $2,000 or more a month. Johnston envisions a downtown replete with living spaces for working-class families, not just dual-income couples without kids and wealthy retirees looking to downsize.

With a diverse crop of residents, the mayor says, demand for grocery stores and daycares will become inevitable. Denver “can’t just be the place where you work from 9 to 5 and then go home,” he says. “We need people living there, walking their dogs there, taking their kids to school there. And all that is predicated on saying everyone should have a stake in the future of downtown, because it will always be the heart of this city.”

It’s nearing midnight, Denver’s final wind-down. Cars make their way up East Colfax Avenue, along the far edge of the proposed DDA, near the state Capitol. Lightning flashes to the west. Storm clouds pull a gray canopy over downtown.

Two men are stretched out in a bus shelter near the Capitol. A man sleeps on the sidewalk. Two blocks up, near Grant Street, a couple of men are slumped against each other on a concrete stoop. Another man is screaming into a cell phone. Make a left and there’s a pile of feces on the sidewalk. A light rain begins to fall.

Seventeen blocks away, the Union Station fountain shuts off for the night. The building is illuminated in blue light and casts dark shadows across the sidewalks. Groups of men and women in T-shirts and shorts head for a bar across the street. A security guard aggressively follows a man who hustles along the walkway between the station and the Ice House Lofts.

Inside the station, empty glasses clink at the Terminal Bar near the Wynkoop Street entrance to the Great Hall. A server sits on a bench and wraps newly cleaned silverware in black cloth napkins. A guard pulls back trash cans and checks hideaway corners for overnight sleepers. Outside, on the train platform, the 12:27 a.m. A-Line rolls into the station. The passengers getting off the train ignore a man dancing on the concrete. “Jesus Christ is in my bloodline!” he sings repeatedly.

Above the underground bus terminal, three RTD police officers pass through the glass-encased entrance and take the escalator downstairs. Men and women are scattered about, resting upright in chairs or staring out darkened windows toward the empty docks where buses load. Signs on flat-screen monitors affixed to the walls flash warnings: “No Trespassing, No Loitering, No Lying Down.”

During the pandemic, the underground passage was a microcosm of the city’s ills. Three years ago, the RTD union president called Union Station a “lawless hellhole.” In 2022, RTD hired Joel Fitzgerald Sr., a former suburban police chief in Texas, as the district’s chief and head of emergency management. More security was brought to Union Station, and people began getting arrested.

Tonight, at least, things are quiet. “Two years ago, there was no control,” says Ian Galgano, 32, who’s been on the RTD force since the beginning of this year. “These days, I feel like this is a real policing win.” He walks with his partners tonight—sergeant Kris Stevenson and a trainee, officer Rebecca Sinclair. It’s the trio’s second time down here in the past half hour, a small show of force, they say, that results in less aggression, fewer drug-related crimes, and an overall safer environment.

“Presence is 90 percent of the job, and we’re showing, night after night, that we’re here,” deputy chief Glyn Horn Jr., who helps oversee the bus terminal patrol, told me later. The terminal, he says, needed to become a bunker to protect. “We took back the hub, and then we deploy outward from that,” Horn says. “We’ve taken back our base.”

In the underground terminal, officers are both police and social workers. “It’s rewarding, because you’re a problem-solver in this job,” says Galgano, who’s originally from Long Island. “Maybe I get to direct someone to a place that’s going to help them with an addiction issue. Maybe I’m going to be able to offer them a safe place to sleep.”

Galgano points to a man in a seat near one of the windows. The last bus pulled out of the station about 15 minutes ago. “The station’s closed,” the officer says, and the man gets up and leaves.

No one puts up a fight tonight. As LoDo nears the end of this 18-hour day, there are no conflicts inside the RTD terminal, no calls for backup, no arrests. The officers head topside. At the glass doors that lead outside, a security guard stops a man with some bags who tries to enter. “Closed,” the guard says in a firm voice.

The guard locks the glass doors while the man watches. The RTD police officers know the man, who sets his bags on the ground and smiles at the trio from behind the glass. Officer Galgano gives a smile and a little wave. The man waves back and nods his head. He turns away from Union Station and disappears into the night.

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The University of Chicago The Law School

Innovation clinic—significant achievements for 2023-24.

The Innovation Clinic continued its track record of success during the 2023-2024 school year, facing unprecedented demand for our pro bono services as our reputation for providing high caliber transactional and regulatory representation spread. The overwhelming number of assistance requests we received from the University of Chicago, City of Chicago, and even national startup and venture capital communities enabled our students to cherry-pick the most interesting, pedagogically valuable assignments offered to them. Our focus on serving startups, rather than all small- to medium-sized businesses, and our specialization in the needs and considerations that these companies have, which differ substantially from the needs of more traditional small businesses, has proven to be a strong differentiator for the program both in terms of business development and prospective and current student interest, as has our further focus on tackling idiosyncratic, complex regulatory challenges for first-of-their kind startups. We are also beginning to enjoy more long-term relationships with clients who repeatedly engage us for multiple projects over the course of a year or more as their legal needs develop.

This year’s twelve students completed over twenty projects and represented clients in a very broad range of industries: mental health and wellbeing, content creation, medical education, biotech and drug discovery, chemistry, food and beverage, art, personal finance, renewable energy, fintech, consumer products and services, artificial intelligence (“AI”), and others. The matters that the students handled gave them an unparalleled view into the emerging companies and venture capital space, at a level of complexity and agency that most junior lawyers will not experience until several years into their careers.

Representative Engagements

While the Innovation Clinic’s engagements are highly confidential and cannot be described in detail, a high-level description of a representative sample of projects undertaken by the Innovation Clinic this year includes:

Transactional/Commercial Work

• A previous client developing a symptom-tracking wellness app for chronic disease sufferers engaged the Innovation Clinic again, this time to restructure its cap table by moving one founder’s interest in the company to a foreign holding company and subjecting the holding company to appropriate protections in favor of the startup.
• Another client with whom the Innovation Clinic had already worked several times engaged us for several new projects, including (1) restructuring their cap table and issuing equity to an additional, new founder, (2) drafting several different forms of license agreements that the company could use when generating content for the platform, covering situations in which the company would license existing content from other providers, jointly develop new content together with contractors or specialists that would then be jointly owned by all creators, or commission contractors to make content solely owned by the company, (3) drafting simple agreements for future equity (“Safes”) for the company to use in its seed stage fundraising round, and (4) drafting terms of service and a privacy policy for the platform.
• Yet another repeat client, an internet platform that supports independent artists by creating short films featuring the artists to promote their work and facilitates sales of the artists’ art through its platform, retained us this year to draft a form of independent contractor agreement that could be used when the company hires artists to be featured in content that the company’s Fortune 500 brand partners commission from the company, and to create capsule art collections that could be sold by these Fortune 500 brand partners in conjunction with the content promotion.
• We worked with a platform using AI to accelerate the Investigational New Drug (IND) approval and application process to draft a form of license agreement for use with its customers and an NDA for prospective investors.
• A novel personal finance platform for young, high-earning individuals engaged the Innovation Clinic to form an entity for the platform, including helping the founders to negotiate a deal among them with respect to roles and equity, terms that the equity would be subject to, and other post-incorporation matters, as well as to draft terms of service and a privacy policy for the platform.
• Students also formed an entity for a biotech therapeutics company founded by University of Chicago faculty members and an AI-powered legal billing management platform founded by University of Chicago students.
• A founder the Innovation Clinic had represented in connection with one venture engaged us on behalf of his other venture team to draft an equity incentive plan for the company as well as other required implementing documentation. His venture with which we previously worked also engaged us this year to draft Safes to be used with over twenty investors in a seed financing round.

More information regarding other types of transactional projects that we typically take on can be found here .

Regulatory Research and Advice

• A team of Innovation Clinic students invested a substantial portion of our regulatory time this year performing highly detailed and complicated research into public utilities laws of several states to advise a groundbreaking renewable energy technology company as to how its product might be regulated in these states and its clearest path to market. This project involved a review of not only the relevant state statutes but also an analysis of the interplay between state and federal statutes as it relates to public utilities law, the administrative codes of the relevant state executive branch agencies, and binding and non-binding administrative orders, decisions and guidance from such agencies in other contexts that could shed light on how such states would regulate this never-before-seen product that their laws clearly never contemplated could exist. The highly varied approach to utilities regulation in all states examined led to a nuanced set of analysis and recommendations for the client.
• In another significant research project, a separate team of Innovation Clinic students undertook a comprehensive review of all settlement orders and court decisions related to actions brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for violations of the prohibition on unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices under the Consumer Financial Protection Act, as well as selected relevant settlement orders, court decisions, and other formal and informal guidance documents related to actions brought by the Federal Trade Commission for violations of the prohibition on unfair or deceptive acts or practices under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, to assemble a playbook for a fintech company regarding compliance. This playbook, which distilled very complicated, voluminous legal decisions and concepts into a series of bullet points with clear, easy-to-follow rules and best practices, designed to be distributed to non-lawyers in many different facets of this business, covered all aspects of operations that could subject a company like this one to liability under the laws examined, including with respect to asset purchase transactions, marketing and consumer onboarding, usage of certain terms of art in advertising, disclosure requirements, fee structures, communications with customers, legal documentation requirements, customer service and support, debt collection practices, arrangements with third parties who act on the company’s behalf, and more.

Miscellaneous

• Last year’s students built upon the Innovation Clinic’s progress in shaping the rules promulgated by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) pursuant to the Corporate Transparency Act to create a client alert summarizing the final rule, its impact on startups, and what startups need to know in order to comply. When FinCEN issued additional guidance with respect to that final rule and changed portions of the final rule including timelines for compliance, this year’s students updated the alert, then distributed it to current and former clients to notify them of the need to comply. The final bulletin is available here .
• In furtherance of that work, additional Innovation Clinic students this year analyzed the impact of the final rule not just on the Innovation Clinic’s clients but also its impact on the Innovation Clinic, and how the Innovation Clinic should change its practices to ensure compliance and minimize risk to the Innovation Clinic. This also involved putting together a comprehensive filing guide for companies that are ready to file their certificates of incorporation to show them procedurally how to do so and explain the choices they must make during the filing process, so that the Innovation Clinic would not be involved in directing or controlling the filings and thus would not be considered a “company applicant” on any client’s Corporate Transparency Act filings with FinCEN.
• The Innovation Clinic also began producing thought leadership pieces regarding AI, leveraging our distinct and uniquely University of Chicago expertise in structuring early-stage companies and analyzing complex regulatory issues with a law and economics lens to add our voice to those speaking on this important topic. One student wrote about whether non-profits are really the most desirable form of entity for mitigating risks associated with AI development, and another team of students prepared an analysis of the EU’s AI Act, comparing it to the Executive Order on AI from President Biden, and recommended a path forward for an AI regulatory environment in the United States. Both pieces can be found here , with more to come!

Innovation Trek

Thanks to another generous gift from Douglas Clark, ’89, and managing partner of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, we were able to operationalize the second Innovation Trek over Spring Break 2024. The Innovation Trek provides University of Chicago Law School students with a rare opportunity to explore the innovation and venture capital ecosystem in its epicenter, Silicon Valley. The program enables participating students to learn from business and legal experts in a variety of different industries and roles within the ecosystem to see how the law and economics principles that students learn about in the classroom play out in the real world, and facilitates meaningful connections between alumni, students, and other speakers who are leaders in their fields. This year, we took twenty-three students (as opposed to twelve during the first Trek) and expanded the offering to include not just Innovation Clinic students but also interested students from our JD/MBA Program and Doctoroff Business Leadership Program. We also enjoyed four jam-packed days in Silicon Valley, expanding the trip from the two and a half days that we spent in the Bay Area during our 2022 Trek.

The substantive sessions of the Trek were varied and impactful, and enabled in no small part thanks to substantial contributions from numerous alumni of the Law School. Students were fortunate to visit Coinbase’s Mountain View headquarters to learn from legal leaders at the company on all things Coinbase, crypto, and in-house, Plug & Play Tech Center’s Sunnyvale location to learn more about its investment thesis and accelerator programming, and Google’s Moonshot Factory, X, where we heard from lawyers at a number of different Alphabet companies about their lives as in-house counsel and the varied roles that in-house lawyers can have. We were also hosted by Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati and Fenwick & West LLP where we held sessions featuring lawyers from those firms, alumni from within and outside of those firms, and non-lawyer industry experts on topics such as artificial intelligence, climate tech and renewables, intellectual property, biotech, investing in Silicon Valley, and growth stage companies, and general advice on career trajectories and strategies. We further held a young alumni roundtable, where our students got to speak with alumni who graduated in the past five years for intimate, candid discussions about life as junior associates. In total, our students heard from more than forty speakers, including over twenty University of Chicago alumni from various divisions.

The Trek didn’t stop with education, though. Throughout the week students also had the opportunity to network with speakers to learn more from them outside the confines of panel presentations and to grow their networks. We had a networking dinner with Kirkland & Ellis, a closing dinner with all Trek participants, and for the first time hosted an event for admitted students, Trek participants, and alumni to come together to share experiences and recruit the next generation of Law School students. Several speakers and students stayed in touch following the Trek, and this resulted not just in meaningful relationships but also in employment for some students who attended.

More information on the purposes of the Trek is available here , the full itinerary is available here , and one student participant’s story describing her reflections on and descriptions of her experience on the Trek is available here .

The Innovation Clinic is grateful to all of its clients for continuing to provide its students with challenging, high-quality legal work, and to the many alumni who engage with us for providing an irreplaceable client pipeline and for sharing their time and energy with our students. Our clients are breaking the mold and bringing innovations to market that will improve the lives of people around the world in numerous ways. We are glad to aid in their success in any way that we can. We look forward to another productive year in 2024-2025!

Best business laptops of 2024

Combining professionalism and performance with the best business laptops

• 1. Best overall
• 2. Best on a budget
• 3. Best MacBook
• 4. Best for creators
• 5. Best 2-in-1
• 6. Best rugged
• 7. Best Windows
• 8. Best modular
• 9. Best for travelers
• How to choose
• How we test

When it comes to the best business laptops, these are the ones we recommend for portable productivity. 

Our expert review team has tested best laptops , best business computers and best business Macs - so we know what you'll want to check for when choosing your next office laptop. 

Our top choice for best business laptop is the ThinkPad X1 Yoga. Like all the best Lenovo ThinkPad laptops we've reviewed, this one is slim, beautifully designed, packing some impressive specs and a very comfortable keyboard for extended typing periods. Working to a budget? Check out the excellent Acer Travelmate P4 with its lightweight build and long battery life.

During our review process for each machine, we've compared specs, performance, screen quality, and dimensions to find the best laptop computers for business - whether you're working from home, the office, or on the commute. 

The quick list

This is a remarkable laptop with impeccable build quality, an excellent keyboard, fantastic ports, security baked in, making it the obvious top pick.

Read more below

Though cheap, this budget business laptop boasts a 14-hour battery life, an aluminum-magnesium alloy body, and a lightweight machine.

Though just a larger MacBook Air 13-inch, this model's brilliant bigger screen gives business users a lot more screen real estate to multitask in.

A unique laptop for creatives, this also boasts great ports, a powerful processor, and fantastic smart features on top of that extra half-display.

The best implementation of that dual-screen tech, the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is ideal for multitaskers who need a lot more screen real estate.

This military-grade rugged model is the best laptop for business professionals who spend a lot of their time on the field, getting their hands dirty.

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Hitting that sweet spot between design, functionality, and features, this convertible delivers on performance and battery life as well.

A top modular business laptop that can be adapted to fit your needs. Using the AMD Ryzen 7040 Series processor, we found it offers oustanding processing power and efficiency for longer battery life.

The perfect business laptop may not exist, but we reckon the HP Dragonfly G4 comes closes. Performance is exceptional, the screen is stunning, and It easily thrived on a month-long tour of Europe. 

What are the best business laptops in 2024?

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Best business laptop overall

1. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 8

Our expert review:

Specifications

Reasons to buy, reasons to avoid.

When it comes to the best rated work laptops, you can't go wrong with a ThinkPad. Any ThinkPad, really. They're sturdy laptops, built to last years, with the best keyboards you'll find on pretty much any laptop (despite Lenovo changing the design and shortening the key-travel in the bid for thinner designs). If you don't mind aging specs and your workloads are light, even older models still pack a punch.  

For an excellent modern model, we love the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 8. It might not be much to look at - few great laptops for business are. We were impressed by its high-quality build and durability. This is the kind of laptop that will stick with you through thick and thin. And, beyond that durability, it’s quite versatile as well since it has that 2-in-1 form factor. 

Even the basics are done well. The keyboard is comfortable and easy to type on, the trackpad is accurate and responsive, and it has all the ports a businessperson on-the-go could want. Plus, it comes with a stylus.

The 16:10 screen is a joy to work on and has more than enough power for everyday productivity making this an ideal laptop for business. Of course, it won’t work for niche purposes like photo or video editing as it doesn’t have that kind of power. And, it’s expensive, considering that it’s not high-powered or stuffed with a bunch of extra features. But, it’s perfect where it needs to be.

Read our full Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 8 review

• ^ Back to the top

Best budget business laptop

2. Acer Travelmate P4

There are a lot of compromises with the Acer Travelmate P4. When testing, we found that some parts, particularly the SSD, had some issues that could prove frustrating. And, it’s a mostly plastic affair inside that could affect its durability, though it at least keeps the weight down. Yet, for all its faults, this laptop is worth consideration for those that are on a budget.

To start, it’s much more affordable than a lot of the competition while offering enough power for most people to get through their work without issue. The battery life is also pretty good, providing enough juice to last through a whole work day and then some. And, the included Thunderbolt port gives some flexibility when using this portable with other peripherals such as an external monitor.

One of the biggest surprises for us with the Acer Travelmate P4 is the fact that it’s easy to upgrade. Since the parts aren’t soldered in, once you’re able to get inside, it’s quick work to put in a new SSD or RAM to really make the most of this laptop.

All these factors, especially the price, battery life, and upgradability, make this an ideal option for someone who needs a business notebook but has limited funds.

Read our full Acer Travelmate P4 review 

Best MacBook for business

3. apple macbook air 15-inch (2023).

MacBook Pro laptops are great laptops for work, but if you want a lightweight, portable option, check out the MacBook Air. It is a bit of an anomaly when compared to the rest of Apple ’s options. It’s bigger than the 13-inch version yet is essentially the same inside, starting with the same M2 chip, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD. But, some people just want something a little less cramped than a 13-inch screen when getting through the workday and this laptop is for them.

Even though it doesn’t separate itself from its little brother performance-wise, we were still very impressed. After all, Apple has managed to squeeze some good performance out of those specs. On top of that, the larger 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display is gorgeous to look at, offering a crisp 2880 x 1864 resolution with wide P3 color coverage that makes it perfect for getting some photo editing done.

While this is a larger laptop, its slim design still makes this Apple laptop fairly portable, even if it’s not quite as easy to carry around as its little brother. And, since it sports those same internals, it comes with a fairly generous price tag, at least by Apple standards. So, if you want to stay in the Apple ecosystem for work and don’t want to spend the money on one of the Pro models, this 15-inch MacBook Air may be the ideal option for you.

You could save on your purchase with our Apple coupon codes .

Read our full Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (2023) review

Best business laptop for creators

4. Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED

The ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED is a step forward in the next generation of laptops thanks to its unique two-screen setup. Taking Apple’s controversial touch bar concept and adding a larger second screen right above the keyboard, this Asus laptop manages to make its unique setup indispensable for getting work done.

In fact, we were impressed by how versatile that second screen was. Not only is it angled for easy viewing, but it has touch capability so we were able to turn it into a gigantic touchpad when necessary. That would be just a gimmick if it weren’t for the quality of the main OLED display, which is HDR capable and has the kind of color coverage that photographers need when editing their photos.

Beyond the two displays, we found the Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED to have more than enough power to get through most productivity and creative work, thanks to the robust GPU it came with.

Of course, the battery life is not the best considering this laptop is trying to power two screens. And, the trackpad is a little wonky with its strange placement off to the side. Outside of that, this is a stellar laptop with a premium feel and, of course, a unique setup that’s great for complicated workflows like those that creatives have to deal with.

Check out our Asus coupon codes for the latest savings and deals. 

Read our full ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED review

Best 2-in-1 laptop for business

5. Lenovo Yoga Book 9i

The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i may just be the most elegant, most effectively designed dual-screen laptop we've ever tested. It boasts two displays, but it manages to pull that off while still maintaining that beautiful, thin and lightweight form factor that Lenovo is now known for. 

It certainly makes that dual-screen format so incredibly seamless to use with several special functionalities, keyboard shortcuts, and very responsive touchscreen capabilities. Not to mention that it's an absolute game-changer when it comes to multitasking.

What's more, the Intel Core i7-1355U powering it is specifically designed for ultra-thin portables, allowing it to stay relatively cool despite not having a lot of breathing room and to last an entire work day. It has proven to be very capable during testing, running multiple apps and multiple browser tabs without experiencing any slowdowns. It's also shown during testing that it's capable enough to perform some light hi-res photo editing on Lightroom and Photoshop .

We also appreciate the comfortable keyboard and mouse that comes included in the box as they offer a great alternative if interfacing with a virtual keyboard and a virtual trackpad is taking a while to get used to. It's a little expensive, and there's only one configuration available at the time of writing, but it's more than a worthy investment, especially if you're the type who regularly multitasks like we do.

Read our full Lenovo Yoga Book 9i review

Find great deals on laptops with our Lenovo promo codes .

Best rugged business laptop

6. Getac B360 Pro (2023)

Business professionals who spend a lot of time out on the field need a more robust laptop that can handle such things as inclement weather, hard knocks and drops, and dirt and dust. And for such a need, we vote the Getac B360 Pro (2023), a solid portable (if you can call it that) that built to take the hardest knocks and the worst environments and can pretty much handle anything.

The B360 Pro is sold as military-grade and mission-ready, with an outer shell that can withstand being dropped six feet and temperatures from -29°C to +63°C (-20°F to 145°F). It also has MIL-STD-810H, MIL-STD-461G and IP66 certifications.

We can't claim that this is the perfect laptop. The port layout could have been better, and it needs a better Gen 4 NVMe drive installed. But it's a highly customisable platform that comes with two hot-swap replaceable batteries as standard and can charge up to eight batteries. It also has a wide selection of accessories to mount it to a vehicle or dock it in the office. 

That's not to mention impressive performance and battery life that can keep up. Looking at the GTX 1650's speed in our 3DMark, GeekBench OpenCL and PCMark10 tests, the only machine we’ve seen recently that can beat the B360 Pro is the Dell Precision 5470 with its more powerful RTX A1000 discrete video. 

Read our full Getac B360 Pro (2023) review  

Best Windows laptop for business

7. Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1

The Dell Latitude line-up is vast - with corporate, enterprise, and education laptops padding out the market. They're more than powerful enough for a daily driver in the office, home, or on-the-go, and in our experience the keyboards are generally fine for long hours, even if they don't quite match the natural comfort of the ThinkPad keys. 

The 2-in-1 Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 may be the best value laptop we've tested. It hits that sweet spot between design, functionality, and features - so much so it's nearly perfect in our book. 

The features, of course, help justify that high price tag. There's the Haptic Collaboration touchpad, multi-connection network technology, and an expansive screen that gives users a lot more screen real estate. 

What's remarkably impressive part of this laptop is that it can actively be connected to two networks at once and switch between them as needed for the best connection. And this feature has proven to be impressive during testing, especially for power business users who take vital calls and can't risk losing connection.

But once you take this out for a spin, you'll realize as well that its phenomenal performance helps. It certainly hit all our marks in what to expect from a professional business laptop on test, and we found its battery life just as impressive.

Read our full Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 review  

Best modular business laptop

8. Framework Laptop 13 7040 Series

Framework offers a unique approach to Laptops where modularity is paramount, and the customer can easily specify what they want to see in external ports. What’s fascinating about this concept isn’t that the module ergonomics of the Laptop 13 aren’t amazingly complicated or revolutionary. Instead, modularity is also focused on the customer's needs, not merely as a means for making cheaper laptops.

The Ryzen 7040 Series is a sub-set of the Laptop 13 models that uses the latest Zen mobile processors, providing impressive processing power and efficiency for longer battery life. Framework offers three SKUs, or customers can go with a DIY option to define a laptop that is personal to them.

All the internal parts are also modular, not just the external ports, and that should make these machines easy to service and fix should they have a problem. The downside to this increased flexibility is that Framework only offers a single year of warranty, and the cost of these machines is slightly above what the exact specifications would cost in a machine that wasn’t modular.

But for those who want a beautifully engineered laptop where the ports can be easily changed as needed, there aren’t many other options available today.

Read our full Framework Laptop 13 7040 Series review

Best business laptop for travelers

9. HP Dragonfly G4

“Brilliant - and not just for business” is how we described the HP Dragonfly G4 when we took this laptop out for a spin. The perfect laptop may not exist, but in our view, the mighty HP Dragonfly G4 sure comes pretty damn close. 

This one's a bit of a rarity in the world of business laptops - it looks and feels neither business-y or bulky. We absolutely love the design and build, which is robust, lightweight, and seemingly tailored for travel or hybrid working. During our review, we travelled around Europe for a month with the Dragonfly G4. It not only survived – it thrived.  And the battery easily held an all-day charge. During our tests, it hit an average 12 hours and 44 minutes. Not quite as long as a MacBook Pro, but great for everyday users.

Performance is equally impressive. Even opening an unhealthy number of tabs in Chrome, running multiple apps, and batch-editing images in Photoshop and Lightroom, slow-downs were non-existent. The screen is ideal for photo editing, as it happens. A stunning 13-inch 1280p display boasting 391 nits and 113.3% sRGB coverage, and an average Delta-E color accuracy of 0.14 (these numbers are based on our benchmark results). However, we were disappointed to see the weak 80.2% DCI-P3 coverage means it’s not the best for video editing. 

It’s a minor niggle for a laptop chiefly designed for professionals on the go. Earning a TechRadar Recommends badge, this is an incredibly lightweight, portable, and robust laptop – making it the perfect travel companion.

Read our full HP Dragonfly G4 review  

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Best business laptops: FAQs

What are the best laptops for business.

It will depend on what sort of business tasks you're undertaking, but generally, the best Dell laptops , MacBook Pros, and Windows are ideal for all-round professional use. These laptops for business purpose are fast, robust, and reliable. The best HP laptops are great if you're working to a budget, and many at the lower end of the range are absolutely perfect for running Microsoft Office, Google Docs, and general web browsing. 

What features should I look for in a business laptop?

We asked Zach Noskey, Director of Latitude Product Management at Dell Technologies, what he thought

There are many important features that differentiate a business laptop from a traditional consumer laptop. Specific capabilities to consider when purchasing a fleet of PCs will depend on the type of business and the role and responsibilities of employees, but below are a few broad areas to prioritize:

• Collaboration :  With the growth of hybrid work, employees need the capabilities to collaborate and connect from anywhere. Business workers rely on best-in-class video and audio features for frequent conference calls. Look for a minimum FHD camera for quality picture, top firing speakers for improved sound, and Wi-Fi 6E and 5G for a variety of connectivity options.
• Design :  Workers need mobile and flexible form factors for working on-the-go. Business laptops should ideally be lightweight and small, but also include a 16:10 aspect ratio display for an optimal front of screen experience. Plus, they should be made with durable and premium materials built to last.
• Performance :  Performance is a given for maximum productivity. Choose business laptops equipped with the latest generation of processors available to run applications smoothly when multi-tasking and preserve battery life. CPU and GPU specifics, such as discrete graphics, will depend on the demands of a worker’s role. Finally, look for systems with a minimum of 16GB of dual-channel memory and at least 512GB of SSD drive space.
• Security and support:  It’s not only about the end user experience. IT departments need enterprise-level hardware/firmware and software security features to prevent, detect and respond to threats wherever they occur. Plus, IT needs reliable service and support options for their fleet of PCs. Depending on the size of the business, companies might consider an all-in-one IT support option that handles all elements of hardware management, or choose a flexible offering that helps simplify deploying the latest PCs.

What are the key differences between the best business laptops and laptops for home?

We asked Eric Ackerson, Senior Product Marketing & Brand Manager, Acer America

There are significant design and hardware differences between consumer and business laptops. In most cases, business models are made with more durable materials and construction to withstand the rigors of travel and toting the laptop to and from the office. This means they’re typically built with more metal in the chassis as compared to plastic that’s often used in consumer models. Many are MIL-STD 810H-certified with spill-resistant keyboards and touchpads to protect internal components from liquids. Shock-resistant features and semi-ruggedized designs help protect them from short drops. Business laptops focus on durability, reliability, performance and life span, which often means a long battery life and the ability to upgrade the laptop over time. Consumer laptops have more focus on style and value for today’s computing needs.

Another key difference is in the software installed on the systems. Business laptops will come with Windows 11 Pro vs. Windows 11 Home. Windows 11 Pro has many features supporting business management and deployment, which aren’t necessary for consumer computers. These laptops will typically have other manageability features built-in to aid IT departments in diagnosing, updating systems remotely and deploying to their workforce. In contrast, consumer laptops are often loaded with entertainment-focused applications for social media, gaming and digital hobbies that business workers do not need and IT departments may see as security risks. Simplifying the software pre-load for large quantities of business laptops purchased in bulk eases setup, deployment and management of these laptops.

In addition, Windows 11 Pro provides extra security features through hardware-based security, such as TPM 2.0, virtualization-based security (VBM) and hypervisor protected code integrity (HVCI).  Software-based security adds advanced encryption, robust network and system security and intelligent safeguards, which improve over time against ever-evolving threats. Laptops designed for business may also come with sensors that detect people based on range and movement. These laptops can lock the screen when the user steps away and also blur the screen to off-angle viewing to prevent someone seeing the screen’s content over a user’s shoulder.

Another factor differentiating business models is the warranty. Consumer laptops typically have a one-year warranty, while commercial warranties may last up to three years and cover on-site service from a technician and the provision of spare parts.

Finally, business laptops are more conservative in style and color in comparison to consumer versions, to keep a low profile and blend in commercial settings. Consumer models, particularly those designed for gaming, may come in bright colors and with multi-colored RGB keyboards.

In conclusion, there are significant differences between consumer and business laptops. While each type of laptop serves its purpose, it is important to consider needs and priorities before making a purchase. Whether you are looking for advanced security features or budget-friendly options, there is a laptop on the market to meet your needs.

How to choose the best business laptops

Finding the best laptop for you is all about deciding what you consider most important and focusing on those needs before considering other requirements. If you work in an office, battery life might not be critical, but it might be vital for those working away from a desk.

Laptop makers offer many devices, each aimed at a specific user and usage profile. Therefore it's essential to consider the role this system will play in the office and what it needs to support that. You should also check if your company has a preferred operating system - many like to use Windows, but some of the best MacBook Pro laptops are perfect for business use.

Here are some of the aspects that we consider the most important.

Performance

The performance available from a modern laptop can be awe-inspiring. Many more expensive models have potent processors, NVMe storage, and discrete GPUs.

Typically, cheap machines come with an Intel Celeron or Core i3 class processor, and they're only suitable for relatively light office tasks. Above them are devices that use the Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5, and these are the workhorses that can cope with most tasks by having lots of processing cores and multi-threaded processors. And on the top rung are the Intel Core-7 and Core-i9 mobile processors and the AMD Ryzen 7 class CPUs. These powerhouse systems can be used for very intensive tasks often allocated to desktop computers, and they can come with discrete GPU technology allowing them to play games and be used with the best 3D modeling software .

For integrated GPUs, the lesser machines have the old Intel UHD Graphics module, and in newer Intel chips, this has been supplanted by the Iris Xe GPU. Conversely, AMD systems have either the older Radeon Graphics or, the better Radeon 680M.

The discrete GPU options are usually based around either Nvidia RTX or AMD RX technology, with various performance tiers available. What's important to understand is that mobile GPUs aren't comparable to desktop equivalents. Therefore, don't expect an Nvidia RTX 3060 mobile GPU to perform like that same designation in a PCIe card for a desktop system.

Because of power limitations and heat generation, mobile GPUs tend to be cut down from the desktop regarding shaders, memory buses, and clock speeds.

Battery Life

The extent of battery life depends on several factors, not least the battery capacity and how efficiently the system uses the stored power.

While having a bigger battery is suitable for how long it will last without mains power, it tends to increase the machine's weight, and depending on the charger, it can take longer to recharge.

One of the downsides of more powerful processors is that they will consume more power, and the same is true for discrete GPUs over integrated, high-performance NVMe drives and exceptionally bright displays.

How this translates into the working life of batteries isn't easy to calculate. Still, the difference between a machine using power-saving mode with reduced screen brightness and another using performance settings with an intensive task can be substantial.

The better machines running standard office tasks or playing YouTube videos can last longer than ten hours, and the worst under four.

It is worth pointing out that the newest technology, i.e., Intel 13th Gen and AMD Ryzen 7000 processors, are much more power efficient than previous technologies. Older tech might be cheaper, but it won't last as long on battery, doing the same jobs as something with more modern silicon, as a rule.

Connectivity

Having plenty of port selection is critical if you're hooking up a lot of different devices, from the best business monitors to the best office keyboards . However, This aspect is essential for those considering any of the best Ultrabooks and 2-in-1 designs especially often have limited external ports.

The solution to the limited port selection is to use a docking station. The very best laptop docking stations provide both port extensions and simultaneously charge a business laptop - ideal when working on-the-go.

In our experience, Thunderbolt is best, but the laptop must have at least one of these versatile ports to connect both power and data over a single connection. Achieving similar functionality over USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB-C is possible, but the bandwidth is less. That reduction impacts the flexibility, as the number of peripherals it can handle and the number of downstream ports is less.

If you can afford a machine with a Thunderbolt port(s) and a Thunderbolt docking station, then whatever other ports are on that laptop are largely unimportant.

One point about docking stations: they are usually rated for the watts they can deliver to an attached laptop, i.e., 65W or 83W. Some of the larger mobile workstation designs can draw up to 100W or more, and while these will charge on a docking station that can deliver 65W, it will take longer to charge fully.

Network connections are often Wi-Fi, but some machines have an Ethernet adapter. However, if you have USB 3.2, a USB-to-Ethernet adapter is an inexpensive but valuable accessory.

As for Wi-Fi, some cheaper machines have Wi-Fi 5, but the better ones have Wi-Fi 6 or 6E. If you intend to connect over Wi-Fi, it might be helpful to know the Wi-Fi routers' technology and a specific system design to work best with them.

Survivability

It might seem an obvious thing to mention, but laptops get broken every day. They fail due to a manufacturing mistake, the owner being clumsy, unexpected vehicle accidents, and flood damage. The number of ways they can cease to be useful is a remarkably long list.

Cheaper machines tend to use an aluminum frame with plastic panels attached that aren't best suited to survive a drop or being doused with hot coffee, not least being outside in the rain. Higher-end machines tend to use more metal, making them intrinsically more likely to handle some abuse.

But, if you intend to work outdoors, in a wet or dusty environment, or have the skill of a lucky dip machine, then the best rugged laptops offer a robust and sturdy alternative. No machine is beyond being damaged by the creative things people do with them, but some are better suited to brush off accidents that would kill cheaper systems instantly.

How we test the best business laptops

We've tested hundreds of professional-use business laptops, like the best laptops for working from home , best laptops for programming , the best laptops for engineering students , and the best laptops for photo editing . 

Before we get to benchmarks and their ilk, when testing the best business laptops we usually go through a familiarisation protocol. This is where we’ll use the machine for a few days for general tasks to establish if it is all working as intended and highlight any potential issues that the designers overlooked.

During this phase, we’ve seen many problems, like hinges that cover up ports or trackpads unsuitable for adult-sized hands. Those issues are less common since many designs are derivatives of previous models with new motherboards rather than entirely new hardware.

After testing the trackpad and keyboard, we usually remove the back of the machine to see inside the case unless we know a sticker is denying us access to the inside. In that scenario, it is usually possible to get a manual that reveals what we’d see, and that is crucial for us to determine if the laptop can be user upgraded, stickers or not.

Many of the thinner Ultrabook and 2-in-1 models are now surface mounting memory, stopping that from being upgraded by the owner. But even those tend to have an M.2 slot for the NVMe drive that allows larger enterprises to be used. For those that have run the same system for many years, it might also be helpful to see what the spec of the battery pack is for that to be potentially replaced when it becomes worn out.

After we’ve done that investigation and put the machine back in one piece, we begin our testing protocol, where we go through a selection of benchmarks that test different aspects of the hardware. These benchmarks include many synthetic tests like 3DMark, PCMark10, GeekBench, CineBench23, CPU-Z, CrystalDiskMark 8.04, and other real-world tools.

These give a good oversight on single and multi-core processing, GPU performance, NVMe speed, and battery life.

The battery test is part of PCMark10 that requires the screen to be dimmed to 120 nits and the performance setting of the machine put into a power-saving mode (but with the screen always active). The screen brightness is confirmed with the DataColor calibrator, and the test runs until the battery from total hits 20% of its capacity. From this test, it is possible to provide a ballpark time for how long a laptop will last without mains power.

Exactly how it performs will depend on how it is used and how demanding those tasks are. Still, the calculated time should reveal if a fully working day on battery power is possible.

All this data is then cross-checked with that collected from other testing sessions to establish where the machine fits into our bigger picture, specifically against other hardware that uses the same processor platform or against a previous model in the same series.

You can learn more about our testing process in How we test laptops and desktops: our reviewing process explained .

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Steve is TechRadar Pro’s B2B Editor for Creative & Hardware. He explores the apps and devices for individuals and organizations that thrive on design and innovation. A former journalist at Web User magazine, he's covered software and hardware news, reviews, features, and guides. He's previously worked on content for Microsoft, Sony, and countless SaaS & product design firms. Once upon a time, he wrote commercials and movie trailers. Relentless champion of the Oxford comma.

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BREAKING NEWS

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A warning and 14 advisories in effect for 6 regions in the area, harris to propose tenfold startup tax incentive increase she says will spur small business creation.

Will Weissert

Associated Press

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris campaigns with President Joe Biden at the IBEW Local Union #5 union hall in Pittsburgh on Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris plans to propose on Wednesday a tenfold increase in federal tax incentives for small business startup expenses, from $5,000 to $50,000, hoping to help spur a record 25 million new small business applications over her four-year term should she win the presidency in November .

She's set to unveil the plan during a campaign stop in the Portsmouth area of New Hampshire — marking a rare deviation from the Midwestern and Sunbelt battlegrounds the Democrat has focused on in her race against former Republican President Donald Trump .

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A Harris campaign official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a policy plan that hadn't been released publicly, said Tuesday the change would cover the $40,000 it costs on average to start a business. The proposal would let new businesses wait to claim that deduction until they first turn a profit, to better maximize its impact lowering their taxes.

Such changes would likely require congressional approval. But a series of tax cuts approved during the Trump administration are set to expire at the end of next year, setting up a scenario where lawmakers may be ready to consider new tax policies. The proposal can help Harris show her support for entrepreneurs even as she's called for higher corporate tax rates.

Since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Harris in July, the vice president has focused on campaigning in the “ blue wall ” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that have been the centerpiece of Democratic campaigns that have won the White House in recent decades.

She’s also frequently visited Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, all of which Biden narrowly won in 2020, and North Carolina, which last voted Democratic in a presidential race in 2008 but which she’s still hoping to flip from Trump. Biden won New Hampshire by 7 percentage points in 2020, though Trump came far closer to winning it against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

"The cost of living in New Hampshire is through the roof, their energy bills are some of highest in the country, and their housing market is the most unaffordable in history,” Trump posted last week on his social media platform.

Harris' team says securing 25 million new business applications in four years if she wins the White House would exceed the roughly 19 million such applications filed since Biden took office. And those were millions more than the previous four years under Trump. The vice president's goal would be a record for new small business applications — but records only go back about 20 years.

Applications to start a business don't always translate to small businesses actually being formed. Still, Harris' plan could keep new small businesses that do come to fruition from otherwise incurring more debt which, at a time of high interest rates, might help them better succeed.

In the weeks since Harris took over the top of the Democratic ticket, she has offered relatively few major policy proposals — attempting to strike a political balance between injecting new energy into the race and continuing to support many of the Biden administration proposals she helped champion as vice president.

Harris’ small business plan follows her announcing last month proposed steps to fight inflation by working to lower grocery prices , and to use tax cuts and other incentives to encourage homeownership. The vice president has also proposed ending federal taxes on tips to service industry workers, an idea Trump proposed first.

The plan she's introducing Wednesday further calls for developing a standard deduction for small businesses meant to save their owners time when doing their taxes, and making it easier to get occupational licenses — letting people work across state lines and businesses expand into new states. Harris also wants to offer federal incentives so state and local government will ease their regulations.

In an effort to spur business investment outside urban and suburban hubs, Harris is pledging to launch a small business expansion fund to enable community banks and federal entities to cover interest costs while small businesses are expanding or otherwise creating jobs. Her team says those efforts will focus especially on areas that traditionally receive less investment.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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More From Forbes

Arizona cardinals season preview: healthy murray a reason for hope.

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Quarterback Kyler Murray's health has the Arizona Cardinals thinking good thoughts. (Photo by Jeff ... [+] Bottari/Getty Images)

The Arizona Cardinals will begin again again this season.

The Cardinals had a rocky start on the field in coach Jonathan Gannon’s first year in 2023, but the return of two-time Pro Bowl quarterback Kyler Murray midway through the year provided a dramatic uptick.

There are plenty of reasons to believe the Cardinals will take another step forward is possible. It is even likely.

The biggest, of course, is Murray’s health. Murray missed 13 games in 2022-23 after suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee on the fourth play of a Dec. 12, 2022, loss to New England. He was out the final five games of that season and the first eight a year ago, and a suitable replacement was never found.

The Cardinals made strides in head coach Jonathan Gannon first season. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

The Cardinals were 3-5 after Murray returned for a Nov. 12 victory over Atlanta, and they followed that with wins over playoff teams Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and a five-point loss to AFC South champion Houston, and making the 4-13 season record more palatable.

Gannon and general manager Monti Ossenfort have fostered a culture of toughness and accountability while using their two drafts to restock the roster since arriving a month apart in the winter of 2023, and the group has bought in.

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Wednesday, September 4

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The Cardinals used the No. 4 pick in the 2024 draft to fill their largest need by selecting Ohio State wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., son of the former NFL Hall of Fame receiver of the same name.

First-round draft choice Marvin Harrison Jr. will step into the primary receiving role. (AP ... [+] Photo/Bart Young)

Arizona had not drafted a receiver that high since taking 11-time Pro Bowler Larry Fitzgerald with the third pick of the 2004 draft. Fitzgerald is second in the NFL in career receptions and career receiving yards, and the Cardinals can be forgiven if they see Harrison Jr.’s pedigree and project similar production.

Free agent Sean Murphy-Bunting signed a three-year, $22.5 million contract to join second-year defender Garrett Williams at cornerback, a recent weakness. Inside linebacker Kyzir White is back after missing half of last season with a biceps injury.

Jonah Williams signed a two-year, $30 million free agent deal to play right tackle, which enabled the Cardinals to move 2023 No. 1 draft pick Paris Johnson to his more natural left tackle spot.

The draft also brought defensive lineman Darius Robinson (second round) and running back Trey Benson (third round). Both are expected to contribute, although Robinson will be delayed after suffering a calf injury in practice.

Desmond Ridder was acquired from Atlanta to back up Kyler Murray. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)

Quarterback Desmond Ridder, who started 13 games last year and 17 in his two seasons with Atlanta, was acquired to back up Murray. The Cardinals floundered when Joshua Dobbs and rookie Clayton Tune were forced to play meaningful snaps in Murray’s absence a year ago.

Team Strengths

Newcomer Harrison gives Murray the legitimate No. 1 target he has not had since DeAndre Hopkins, and Murray knows how to use his top receiver. He and Hopkins combined for 115 receptions, 1,407 yards and six touchdowns in 2020, the only season when they were both healthy all season. A highlight was the Hail Murray.

Gannon believes in winning at the line of scrimmage, a trait most noticeable in the final four games, when the Cardinals gouged three of their final four opponents for 200-plus rushing yards — San Francisco (234), Philadelphia (221) and Seattle (206). Running back James Conner had a career-high 1,040 yards rushing in only 13 games. Draftee Benson will add a big body there.

The Cardinals led the NFL in yards before contact per rush (3.1) a year ago behind center Hjalte Froholdt and right guard Will Hernandez. Evan Brown was acquired from Seattle to play left guard. Tight end Trey McBride (81 receptions, 825 yards) and Murray developed a strong bond a year ago.

Trey McBride had 53 receptions in the final eight games of 2023 after Kyler Murray returned. (AP ... [+] Photo/Rick Scuteri)

Question Marks

The Cardinals must address their defense across the board after struggling in 2023, They gave up a league-high 2,434 yards rushing, 143 yards per game, and were 25th in total yards allowed overall at 355.7. The absence loss of six-time Pro Bowl safety Budda Baker for five games hurt the back end, which gave up 35 touchdowns passes. Only Washington gave up more.

Murphy-Bunting should help. Robinson was drafted to firm up the interior, although the Cardinals lost starting linebacker BJ Ojulari to a torn knee ligament in the preseason. Ojulari had four of the Cardinals’ 33 sacks a year ago, and only linebacker Dennis Gardeck (six) had more. Linebacker Zaven Collins, the 16th player taken in the 2021 draft, has yet to make an impact.

Pro Bowl safety Budda Baker blitzes Houston quarterback C.J. Stroud. (Photo by Tim Warner/Getty ... [+] Images)

Harrison and McBride are likely to be the top receivers, but Michael Wilson could step up. He had 38 receptions for 565 yards and three touchdowns in 12 starts as a rookie last season.

Best-Case Scenario

Kyler Murray plays 17 games, Harrison is as advertised, and the Cardinals continue to pound the line of scrimmage, relieving pressure on their defense. Murray was asked to do much under former coach Kliff Kingsbury, whose offense required Murray to be a hero most of the time. With Gannon’s more balanced approach, the Cardinals simply need Murray to be an occasional hero now.

Kyler Murray can score with his legs as well as his arm. (Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images)

ESPN had a nice little stat recently — on top of everything else, the Cardinals faced No. 1 quarterbacks about 93 percent of the time a year, by far the highest percentage in the league. While they meet 2023 playoff teams in five of their first six games, a fifth-place schedule gets appreciably easier after that. The Cardinals have ninth-easiest slate based on opponents’ 2023 winning percentage. A winning season would not be a surprise.

Worst-Case Scenario

Murray’s hamstring/knee injuries flare up again, and the defense cannot put consistent pressure on opposing quarterbacks.

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