The answer is no.   It is not essential.   I have been using the forms that you find in the National Chapter Award Handbook for years now and they work fine.    If you want to convert them over to a computerized format, I have used excel and come up with some forms of my own that are tailored to our chapter.   It wont work for everyone.

The Tool allows you to use a traditional POA development process but convienent featues like linking documents together, automatically generates a chapter calendar, creates a chapter budget and generates pdf files of all of your forms for easy printing, emailing or posting to a website.

Many teachers like the ability save your plans year after year in the same location and that the software really gets students involved in the planning process.