The value of the business plan of Ukrainian small and medium enterprises for small enterprises is substantiated in the article. However, the practical activities of domestic enterprises, this tool is not used enough. The main reason is the reluctance of the business owner to spend time on issues and the desire to start a business. It is proved that the effectiveness of business planning depends on the fact that the monitoring of the implementation of the business plan in the course of current activities. This important task is not performed in small enterprises, however, it applies to small enterprises when it comes to staff who would perform all the additional tasks and the owners' understanding of the need for such control. The paper considers the possibilities of using business planning as a tool for crisis management for small businesses. This requires the management of the subjects to implement this plan certain special knowledge, skills that do not work in the process of developing types of plan. They create this for SMEs even more, because they require even more universal workers who are able to take into account the requirements of the crisis situation, or get the cost of third-party services. The article finds that the variety of purposes for which business plans can be formed does not extend to small and medium enterprises in Ukraine. In domestic practice, the planning of a majority enterprise is used to raise funds and justify projects, as this is usually caused by external initiative. At the same time, other goals, such as enterprise risk management and generalization and evaluation of current activities are formed on the initiative of the enterprises themselves, and therefore are practically not implemented in the studied group of enterprises. The cost of business planning is a deterrent to its operation of small and medium enterprises. This is due to an objective reason – limited financial resources in small farms and subjective – the desire to save them on the development of a business plan. One of the main uses of business plans is to raise funds from various sources. At the same time, high-quality business planning reduces the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises to convince investors and credit institutions. Business planning makes it possible to plan the needs of raw materials to segment the market. These two areas are problematic in the economic activities of the studied enterprises.