Christmas Light Business Plan Template (Free, With a P&L)

The one-page plan#

Copy everything between the rules into a document. Square brackets are the fields you fill; the example numbers are ours and you replace them. This is the version you show a partner, a spouse or a supplier who asks for terms.

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[Company name] one-page plan, [season year]

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The full plan template#

The same nine sections, expanded, with the tables prefilled from GlowBid's default seasonal card so you can see what a finished one looks like. Replace every bracketed figure with your rate card before anyone else reads it.

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[Company name] Business plan, [season year] [Owner name] | [Address] | [Phone] | [Email] | [Website] Prepared [date]. Figures in [USD or CAD]. Prices exclude [sales tax or HST].

1. Executive summary

[Company name] installs, takes down and stores Christmas lights for homeowners within [25 miles] of [city]. We price by the foot from a photo of the house, collect a [30] percent deposit at signature, and include takedown in the seasonal price so every customer is a January visit and a re-book. Season one target: [40] jobs at an average ticket of $[2,134], $[85,368] of revenue and $[48,369] net before income tax. Startup costs are $[2,449]; the customer's deposit funds the lights for their own house. We are asking for $[ ] from [source], repaid from December balances. Year two adds permanent lighting.

2. Company and owner

3. Services and rate card

We sell three things. The rate card below is GlowBid's default seasonal card; installers set their own, and yours goes here.

Measurement: footage is drawn on a photo the homeowner or we own, scaled from a known length such as a 16 ft garage door. Photo measurements are estimates and the crew confirms on site. Our contract wording says so and sets what happens if the footage moves.

4. Market and competition

5. Operations and the season calendar

One crew of two does 7.5 crew-hours per job including the drive and the January takedown: 4 hours of install, 1.5 of takedown, 1 hour of driving on each of the two days. Forty jobs is 300 crew-hours.

6. Marketing and re-book

Follow-up on every quote is written down: [day 0, 2, 5, 10 and 21], the five touches in our quote follow-up sequence. In Canada, text and email follow-up needs consent under CASL; the wording is in our CASL follow-up templates.

7. Startup costs

What the money buys before the first deposit lands. Our picks sit inside the sourced ranges; the full kit with prices is on our installation equipment list.

For comparison, Jobber's total is $1,940 to $2,715 and up, Strandr's is $3,000 to $10,000 with a vehicle, and LightQuoter's is $3,050 to $7,800 with no sources on the page. In Canadian dollars at 1.3840, our $2,449 is about $3,389 CAD.

8. Season P&L and monthly cash flow

Per-job P&L, first season, lights included. The house is a two-storey front with 250 lit feet, 16 ft of jumps and a timer.

Season P&L at three job counts. Year-one costs on every job; both crew members paid, including the owner.

Monthly cash flow, 40 jobs. Built from the per-job lines above on the section 5 calendar: 30 percent deposit at signature, balance on install day, materials bought in the install month, card fees booked at install, takedown wages in January. Rounded to the dollar.

The lowest point is the first week of September, before the first deposit, and it is the $2,449 of fixed costs. January is the only month with no cash in, and the plan holds $5,688 back for it in December. Sales tax or HST collected is not in this table; add a line for it below cash in and remit it on your filing dates.

9. Funding request, assumptions and risks

Request. $[ ] from [owner savings / line of credit / term loan], used for [ladders and safety $1,300, insurance $700, software $299, website $150, September living costs $ ], repaid from [December balances by January 31].

Assumptions, each with its source.

Risks and responses.

Appendix. [Rate card, one sample quote with the drawing, the contract, the insurance certificate, the owner's resume.]

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How the season P&L was built#

The whole plan rests on one house: a two-storey front with 250 lit feet of roofline and peaks, a walkway, one small tree, 16 ft of jumps and a timer, drawn on a photo and priced at $2,134.20 on the default seasonal card. Every cost line in section 8 is a supplier page, a government rate or Stripe's fee, and the per-job table is the same one worked line by line on the P&L page, so the two pages cannot disagree. Multiply the job by the count, take off the fixed costs, and that is the season: $48,369 at 40 jobs, 57 percent. The per-foot pricing guide shows how the footage turns into that ticket, and you can price your own house in the free tool and drop it into the table. Every number in the plan then moves with your rate card instead of mine.

What does a lender want in the assumptions section?#

A source beside every number, and a column for what happens when the number is wrong. That is the difference between the table in section 9 and a page of prose about how much people love Christmas lights. The SBA says the lender gives you the document list, so ask for it before you write; what the plan itself has to carry is the arithmetic.

The ask on a first season is small. The fixed costs are $2,449 and the deposits fund the lights, so most of the plan is a September cushion from savings. If you do borrow, the programs exist: in Canada the Canada Small Business Financing Program lends up to $1.15 million per borrower, with up to $150,000 for working capital and $150,000 for a line of credit, to businesses under $10 million in revenue, with a 2 percent registration fee; in the United States the SBA 7(a) cap is $5 million and covers equipment and working capital. Either way, the January cash-flow row is the one the lender reads twice, because it shows you know takedown is a cost month.

Canadian plans need two more lines. Forty jobs is about $118,149 CAD of revenue at 1.3840, so you cross the $30,000 small supplier threshold in your first quarter and register before the first invoice. HST is 13 percent in Ontario, charged on top of the price, collected and remitted, never counted as revenue.

Mistakes that sink a lighting business plan#

• Revenue from an average ticket you never priced. LightQuoter's $1,200 and ZenBusiness's $200 to $500 are national averages of every porch. Price one real house by the foot and multiply that.
• No January. Takedown is 2.5 crew-hours and a second drive on every job, about $150 of the $864 in costs. A cash flow that ends in December is hiding it.
• The deposit counted as profit. The $640 deposit buys $394 of lights first. The plan shows it going out in the install month.
• The owner unpaid. If your hours are free, the net is your wage, not profit, and a lender will say so. Both people on the crew are paid in every table above.
• Fixed costs that do not grow with the crew. Two crews need two sets of ladders and a bigger insurance line; the 150-job column carries $4,149, not $2,449.
• Tax in the revenue line. Sales tax or HST is collected, not earned. Keep the P&L pre-tax and give the tax its own cash-flow line.
• Year-one lights written off. They are inventory in a bin with the customer's name on it. The same house nets $1,587 on $2,089 in year two, 76 percent, if the bin comes back. That is the number that makes the second season, and it belongs in the plan.

Keep the plan tied to the rate card#

The reason this plan can show its arithmetic is that every revenue number came from a drawing. The runs were drawn on a photo of the house, the footage came from the drawn lines, and the rate card turned the footage into the ticket, so the material list, the crew-hours and the price all describe the same house. GlowBid works that way for every quote: draw once and the footage, the bill of materials and the price cannot disagree. Set your per-foot rates, premiums, minimum job and deposit, and the P&L in section 8 becomes your plan with your numbers in it, updated from the quotes you actually sign.

Core is $299 a year at the founding price, $499 regular, with a 7-day trial and no card, and the free roofline tool runs the same drawing with no login until you export. The full product opens November 1, 2026, with 100 founding places.