Forecast

Finance > Forecast answers three questions at once: what is already sold and still to deliver, what might land, and when the money actually moves. You need current Finance read access, which can be granted for a project or client. Figures also depend on your access to their contributing work.

Receipts need price access and payments need cost access. Net movement, cash position and the confidence band need both. If only one side is available, the chart shows that side alone. Restricted table cells say Unavailable; this does not mean zero. A budget move does not remove the original records’ access requirements.

If a fresh read fails or your access is removed, the page hides the previous figures. Open the forecast again after access is restored.

Under Estimate at completion, cost-only readers can review the permitted cost figures without revenue or margin. You can switch between lenses and weeks or months. See Finance setup for access.

Nothing is ever summed across currencies. The page shows one currency at a time, and you switch with the currency control.

The Forecast figure on an individual budget instead projects budget usage from recorded work, unapproved logged time and remaining mapped tasks or bookings. It can be below the sold fee. See Budgets for estimate changes and the calculation.

The three lenses

• Committed is work you have already sold and not yet delivered. A fixed fee line contributes what remains of its sold amount. A time and materials line contributes its future bookings priced at the line rate.
• Pipeline is what is out with clients, weighted by the stage the quote is in.
• Cash is the money itself: outstanding invoice balances, uninvoiced billing schedule items, purchase orders not yet billed, supplier bills, and expenses waiting for reimbursement.

Each of those sources is counted once and once only. A purchase order that has been half billed contributes only its unbilled half, and the bill carries the rest. An invoice raised from a schedule item takes over from it. That holds through every partial state, which is where a forecast usually starts double counting.

Weeks or months

Switch the grain to see the same figures by week or by month, with the cash window covering the next thirteen weeks. Each period shows money in, money out and the net movement, along with the running cash position. The cash heading totals the thirteen weeks shown. The monthly view covers the full forecast range, so its total can differ.

Anything already past its date is not quietly dropped. It is reported as overdue and placed in the first period, with a count of the receipts or payments you can see.

The confidence band

Runnit learns how late each client actually pays, from their own payment history, weighted by amount, so a large invoice a month late counts for more than a small one. Each expected receipt shifts by that client’s average, and the band is drawn one standard deviation either side.

The band moves when money is expected, never how much. A client with no recent history gets no band rather than an inherited one.

Team capacity

Choose a Capacity month to see each person’s available, booked and billable hours, plus utilisation. Booked revenue appears when your access includes prices, in the selected currency. The table also appears when there are no forecast amounts.

Available hours follow working patterns, organisation closures and leave. Bookings and calendar meetings do not reduce this figure. Utilisation divides booked hours by available hours; No available hours means the percentage cannot be calculated. The first and last month include only days in the forecast window.

Project, client and budget filters select the related team once per person. A person can belong to several projects, so do not add their capacity across project views. Set working patterns and leave through Resource planning.

Estimate at completion

Below the curves, each matching active budget in the selected currency shows cost to date, remaining cost, the estimate at completion and the forecast margin, with a flag when it is over sold or under your margin floor. Cost figures and their coverage need cost access; margin and its warning flags also need the relevant price and profit access. You can focus the period or estimate table and use the arrow keys to reach columns on a narrow screen.

Caution

Where the remaining cost cannot be established, the row reads Not known and the margin reads Unknown rather than showing a healthy number. A count of those budgets appears above the table. Treating an unknown cost as zero is the most flattering mistake a forecast can make, so Runnit does not make it.

Remaining cost comes from priced remaining bookings where there are any, and otherwise from remaining estimated hours at the budget’s own realised blended cost rate. A cost rate in another currency is skipped rather than converted at today’s rate.

Receipt recoveries

Outstanding receipt recovery balances contribute to expected cash from the forecast’s start date. They are separate from invoice balances and scheduled billing. Client and billing entity filters apply. Project and budget views exclude these client balances because they have no budget allocation. See Getting Paid.

Next step

Report on any of it from Finance reports.

Historical cutoffs and current limits

Recognised-to-date amounts stop at the forecast’s as of date. Recognition recorded for later dates is excluded from that history.

A partially invoiced schedule keeps its remaining amount in the forecast. You can bill that remainder from Finance > Uninvoiced work or the invoice composer. Only issued invoice lines reduce it. A credit marked for reissue restores that amount; a write-off credit does not. Voiding an invoice restores the scheduled obligation. Percentage schedules exclude time and materials from their base. If an invoice line has conflicting schedule links or a different currency, the forecast identifies the invoice for review instead of guessing its amount.

Choose a Budget above the forecast to focus on its work. Project and client filters supplied in a forecast link stay in effect. Clear filters removes these source filters and keeps your billing entity, currency and view choices. If no amounts match, the page tells you so.

For an invoice, supplier bill or expense shared across budgets, the forecast includes only the selected share after payments. Moving an expense into a reimbursement run changes its expected payment date and counts it once.

General operating costs are excluded from budget, project and client views. Budget views also exclude pipeline quotes and future retainer fees without a budget. These amounts have no allocation to the selected budget. Use the full organisation or billing entity view when checking your overall cash needs.

Review cash with Ru

Where available, ask Ru for a cash forecast with an as of date and the budget, project or client you want to review. The prepared review shows the first thirteen weekly periods, their receipt/payment totals and the source amounts for the whole returned series. These can cover different periods. Amounts are forecasts, not proof of payment or a bank balance.

Ru can choose from up to three separate currency views. The review states its coverage and keeps restricted amounts Unavailable. It never adds currencies together. Open this cash forecast opens the chart with the same date, horizon, currency and filters, using your current access. Viewing the review creates no payment or scenario and changes no source dates.

Help from Ru

Ask Ru to explain this workflow, inspect records you can access, or carry out supported steps when you authorise them. Your permissions and approval rules still apply. See Finance with Ru.

Default quote probabilities match Sales: draft 10%, pending approval 15%, sent 30% and viewed 50%. A probability entered on the quote overrides its default.