Scenarios

A scenario is an alternative somebody is thinking about, modelled beside a budget or a quote: a bigger team, a shorter run, a leaner build, a different price. It answers “what would this look like if” without changing anything.

Nothing in a scenario is live. Creating or editing one never touches a budget line, a total, the billing schedule, revenue recognition, an approval or a quote version. Until you promote it, it is a sketch you can throw away.

To do this	You need
Read budget scenarios and their comparison	View prices or Manage budgets
Create, edit, archive or delete a budget scenario	Manage budgets
Promote a budget scenario	Manage budgets
Read quote scenarios and their comparison	View prices or Manage quotes
Create, edit, archive or delete a quote scenario	Manage quotes
Promote a quote scenario	Send quotes

A scenario is not a version

A budget allows one open change order at a time. Scenarios do not count against that, so you can hold several alternatives beside a change order that is already open, and none of them blocks it.

Scenarios are numbered on their own counter. Budget version 4 can carry scenarios 1, 2 and 3, and promoting scenario 2 renumbers nothing. Each scenario records the version it was modelled against, which is what lets Runnit tell you later that the budget has moved on.

What a scenario holds

Start a scenario from the budget as it stands, or from nothing. Its lines carry a name, the billing type, the unit, quantity, unit price, estimated cost, the role and the activity code.

Open Section and pricing terms under a line to edit its section name, activity code, estimated hours, discounts, markup, cap, percentage fee, burn basis and revenue recognition. Percentages are entered as percentages; prices, costs, fixed discounts and caps use minor units. Select Save the lines to save your changes.

Source tax treatment is retained. Configure tax for a new line through the normal budget or quote workflow. A new section name creates that section in the promoted draft. On a budget it becomes live only when the change order is applied.

Comparing alternatives

The comparison puts the live budget beside every scenario and gives each one five figures with its own difference: total, cost, margin, hours and duration in days.

Cost and margin follow the same visibility rules as everywhere else in Finance: a reader who may see prices but not cost sees the total and the difference, and the cost and margin figures are absent rather than blank. Hours and duration are not money, so anyone who can read the scenario sees them.

Hours come from the lines. An hour-priced line contributes its quantity, a day-priced line contributes its quantity times the hours in a day you set, and an item or percentage line contributes only the hours you state on it, because an item says nothing about effort.

Leave an unestimated cost blank. Enter 0 only when you have estimated a zero cost. An incomplete cost subtotal is labelled partial and has no margin. Hours are also labelled partial when item or percentage lines have no effort estimate; the hours difference and modelled duration stay absent until effort is complete. You can still state a duration yourself.

Comparison figures stay in the budget’s or quote version’s currency. Figures from different currencies are not added together.

Duration is duration, not hours

A scenario carries the assumptions behind it: how many people in each role, how many hours a week each can give this work, working days per week, hours in a day, a start date and any days to skip. Duration is worked out from those, in working days, and the answer says where it came from.

Where the duration came from	What it means
Stated	You typed a duration you already know, and it wins
Modelled	Worked out from the hours and the team’s daily capacity
Unknown	There are no team assumptions and no stated figure

Hours are never substituted for duration. Doubling the team leaves the hours identical and halves the duration, which is the whole point of comparing them. Where there is nothing to work a duration out from, Runnit shows no duration and no difference, rather than a number nobody could justify.

Caution

A scenario does not check whether anyone is free. Duration comes only from the assumptions you type into it. Runnit does not read resource plans, existing bookings, leave or your organisation’s non-working days here, so a scenario cannot tell you the team is already committed elsewhere. The days to skip are a list you enter yourself, not the organisation’s calendar. See Resource Planning for real availability.

Budget alternatives retain the source lines’ discounts, percentage bases and recorded tax treatment. You edit prices on the source budget’s entry basis; comparison totals exclude tax. Quantities retain up to four decimal places, including when you make the alternative a change order.

Making a scenario the plan

Promoting a budget scenario creates a change order, opened the ordinary way. Approval, client acceptance, the closed-period rules and the floor that stops a line dropping below what has been recognised or invoiced all behave exactly as they do for a change order somebody typed by hand. Promotion adds where the change came from, not a shortcut past anything.

The scenario is kept. Runnit records the alternative exactly as it stood at promotion, so the change order the client eventually accepts can be traced back to it. A promoted scenario becomes read only, cannot be deleted, and cannot be promoted a second time. If two people promote the same scenario at once, one change order results, not two.

If the budget moved on, promotion is refused and says which version the budget is on now. Model the alternative again against the current version rather than applying an old comparison.

Promotion carries the alternative’s discounts, caps, percentage terms and sections into the draft. It creates no task, booking or milestone. If the current pricing basis has changed, create a fresh alternative from the current record before promoting it. A failed promotion leaves the budget or quote unchanged; retry after resolving the problem.

Quote scenarios

Quotes work the same way, and quote scenario lines keep what a quote line means: whether a line is optional, which package it belongs to, and which option in a package is the default. Move a line between packages and the alternative records that as a real change.

Promoting a quote scenario always produces a draft, and never edits a version the client has already seen:

The quote’s current version	What promotion does
A draft	Fills that draft
Sent, or otherwise not editable	Opens the next version as a draft, then fills it
Accepted or converted	Refused. A signed version is never revised

The comparison uses the quote’s default package and option selection. Expand Section and pricing terms to change optional lines, defaults and package groups. A quote scenario line has one label, which becomes the quote line name; its existing description is retained.

Existing billing-schedule allocations follow their matched lines into a revision. If an alternative removes an allocated line, review the billing schedule before promoting it.

Asking the Chat Assistant

Ask Ru to list, read, model or promote an alternative when you authorise the step. Promotion uses your normal permissions and approval rules. See Finance with Ru.

Next step

Apply the change the scenario became: Budgets, or put the revised offer in front of the client with Quotes.

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.