Gauge the financial potential of new business ideas—before you launch
How StartSmart works
StartSmart turns answers about your business idea into clear financial projections automatically, without spreadsheets, formulas, or financial modeling experience.
Financial modeling based on your inputs
StartSmart asks guided questions about your business idea, including startup costs, pricing, expected demand, operating expenses, staffing, loan details, and timing.
Based on your responses, StartSmart automatically builds financial projections for revenue, expenses, cash flow, profitability, break-even timing, and startup funding needs.
Built-in logic to handle the math
Behind the scenes, StartSmart handles the calculations, formulas, and financial modeling logic for you.
It translates your assumptions into structured projections so you can see how your business may perform without building a spreadsheet from scratch.
Clear outputs you can use to make decisions
StartSmart gives you a clear financial picture of what it may cost to open, how much cash the business may need, when it may break even, and whether the idea appears financially realistic.
Use the results to refine your assumptions, prepare for a loan application, or decide whether the opportunity is worth pursuing.
What StartSmart helps you see
Understand the financial requirements, risks, and potential of your business idea before you invest significant time or money.
Upfront costs & ongoing expenses
See the estimated cost to launch and operate your business, including one-time startup expenses, recurring monthly costs, staffing, equipment, inventory, marketing, rent, professional services, and other expected costs.
Cash flow & runway
Understand how cash may move through the business over time, when cash may get tight, and how long your initial funding may last before the business can support itself.
Break-even timing
See when projected revenue may cover expenses and when the business may reach break-even, giving you a clearer timeline for when the idea may start paying off.
Profitability potential
Evaluate whether the business can generate sustainable profits over time — and how sensitive that outcome is to pricing, volume, and costs.
Sensitivity to key assumptions
Adjust important assumptions and quickly see how changes affect startup costs, cash flow, break-even timing, profitability, and funding needs.
StartSmart FAQs
Answers to common questions about how StartSmart works and what you can expect.
Many FP&A platforms are built for dedicated finance teams and require significant setup, configuration, and ongoing financial modeling. RunSmart is designed to give business owners powerful financial intelligence and planning capabilities without the complexity of traditional FP&A software.
Simply connect your QuickBooks account and RunSmart automatically analyzes your financial performance, generates forecasts and insights, monitors your financial health, tracks budgets, and produces professional reports without requiring you to build or maintain complicated financial models.
No. RunSmart is designed to make complex financial information easier to understand, even if you don't have a background in finance or accounting.
Plain-language insights, helpful tooltips, and an extensive library of help articles explain financial concepts and results throughout the platform. RunSmart also includes an AI-powered chatbot that can answer questions and explain unfamiliar financial concepts in simple terms whenever you need additional help.
RunSmart's forecasts are built from your historical QuickBooks data using advanced statistical forecasting techniques widely used by Fortune 500 organizations. Instead of relying on simple growth assumptions or fixed percentage increases, RunSmart automatically selects and applies statistical forecasting models tailored to your business's historical data to produce more reliable financial forecasts.
By continuously analyzing historical business performance, RunSmart generates rolling financial forecasts that help you evaluate hiring, pricing, borrowing, spending, expansion, and other important business decisions with greater confidence.
Standard and Premium plan users can begin using RunSmart with less than 24 consecutive months of QuickBooks history. While financial forecasting will not be available until 24 months of historical data are available, you can still analyze your historical financial performance, monitor your business's financial health, review key financial metrics, compare your performance against industry benchmarks, and generate professional reports.
Once your business reaches 24 consecutive months of historical QuickBooks data, financial forecasting is automatically enabled. This allows RunSmart's statistical forecasting models to identify longer-term trends and seasonal patterns, helping produce more reliable forecasts.
Pro plan users require at least 24 consecutive months of historical QuickBooks data before using RunSmart. The Pro plan is designed for businesses that need advanced forecasting, scenario planning, budgeting, workforce planning, automated reporting, and other forward-looking financial planning capabilities, all of which depend on sufficient historical data to produce reliable results.
No. RunSmart is intentionally designed for single-entity businesses and does not support consolidating multiple companies or budgeting by class.
RunSmart focuses on helping firms analyze each client independently so trends, risks, and performance changes are easier to detect, explain, and address.
At this time, RunSmart only supports QuickBooks Online.
Real insights. Real decisions.
