Plans – Runway Help Center

Understanding plans

Plans help you plan for the future

Plans are literally that—your future plans for the business.

They connect your entire roadmap to your model, so you can see the impact of your sales plan, marketing plan, etc. on your metrics. You can invite your team to modify your plans, so they can see exactly how each decision changes your numbers.

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Anyone can play with plans to understand how your model works—without knowing any formulas or how to model. You can also choose to hide or show specific data.

Plans are events you can modify

In Runway, plans are shown as timelines—they have start and end dates, as well as assumptions that affect your forecast.

You can click a plan to see its underlying assumptions, or drag it around to adjust its dates. Once you make changes, you’ll see their impact on your charts and metrics instantly.

Plans can be about anything you’re planning to do! For example, if you're planning to increase your sales reps' commission rate by 5% this year, you can add this change as a plan in Runway. Or, if you’re opening new headcount spots for your engineering team next quarter, that's another plan you can set up:

Plans work the same way everywhere

Whether you make changes in driver cells, databases or driver detail views, all your changes can be instantly tagged to a plan. This allows you to weave the context behind your numbers right into your model.

Working with plans

Connecting a cell to a plan, to modify forecasted value

You can tag any change you make in a driver table, a database, or the driver details view with a plan. Editing and tagging cells works the same way across Runway. Let’s take a driver table as an example:

In Runway, driver values are shown as time series. Historical values are calculated using actuals formulas, and are based on your live data. Forecasted values are calculated using your forecast formulas, and fall after Last Close date. While forecasts flow from your pre-defined formulas by default, these cells can be modified to link them to your plans for the future.

Let’s create a new plan and connect it with a driver:

Select a forecast value cell to begin.

Press Enter to adjust its value. Then:

Press +/- to modify the formula output, and add the impact to your original forecast.

Or, press Backspace/Delete to replace the original forecast completely.

When you’re done, press Cmd/Ctrl + Enter to tag your change with a plan.

You can also tag multiple cells with the same plan. Just select the ones you want, and click Tag plan (or press Cmd/Ctrl + Enter):

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If you type in a new value into a cell without selecting a plan, Runway will automatically link the change to Default Plans. (Double-click the value cell again to check.)

De-linking a plan from affected cells

Double-click cells that are linked to a plan.

In the pop-up menu, click the ellipsis and select Reset to default value. All done!

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Deleting the value flowing in from a plan is not the same as setting the value to 0.

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De-linking a plan only removes its impact from the affected cell. This doesn’t delete the de-linked plan—or its impact on other cells—from Runway.

Connecting a database row to a plan

Let’s consider an Employees database.

Start by adding new rows to represent future hires.

Next, assign a Start date for each future hire. Once you do, these future hires will all show up in your Default Plans.

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Deleting a plan that originates from a new database row (or “object”) will clear the Start date for that object, but the object itself won’t be deleted or lost.

Organizing your plans

Your plans can grow in number rapidly. To manage them easily, you can group related plans together.

Let’s create a new group for all your engineering headcount plans:

Navigate to the dedicated Plans section from the main nav in Runway. You’ll see a list of all your existing plans.

Press Cmd/Ctrl and select related plans.

Right-click your selection and click Group in the menu that pops up. Type in a name and press enter to group your plans. Alternatively, you can press Cmd/Ctrl+G to do that.

Adding a plan to a page

Pages let you track key metrics using tables and live charts, and see related databases. You can add plans to your pages to quickly change timelines or underlying assumptions—and see the impact on your metrics in real-time.

To add a plan to a page:

Press / and start typing Plan Timeline. This command will surface all plans in the current scenario as a new block.

You can see the month-by-month impact of each Plan on affected drivers:

You can also customize the block:

Grab and drag to reorder plans.

Adjust your plan for a single month—leaving the rest untouched.

Stretch a plan to extend it over multiple months.

If the associated change is defined by the = operator, your plan gets duplicated.

Otherwise, if the change is defined by +/- operators, the impact of the original plan will be distributed. For example: if the monthly plan involved doing a ‘+10’ to a single month initially, and if it’s now stretched over a 2-month period, the impact on each affected month will be ‘+2.’

Add rules to filter plans by name, model, etc.—so you only see plans that are relevant to your page.

You can also play around with your Plan Timeline—this is where the magic happens. Say you have a plan that increases your sales rep commission rate by 5% this year. You’re still deciding when would be a good time for this move.

To see the exact impact of different dates, just click to grab the related plan and drag it along the timeline.

You’ll see the impact flowing through your whole model in real-time:

Accessing a plan’s details

Click on the upward arrow next to a plan's name. A details view modal will open up.

You'll see a timeline view of all drivers or database objects impacted by that plan. To change when an impact lands—and to see its effect on drivers flagged as "KPIs"—just drag the impact on the timeline.

Deleting a plan

To delete a plan permanently, right-click its name and select Delete.

Alternatively, if you’re in the details view, you can click on the Delete icon at the top right.

You can also delete the impact of the plan on a single driver. To do this, right-click the driver's name in the timeline and select Delete.

FAQ

Could moving my Last Close date forward delete my plans?

No.

Let’s say you have a plan that impacts your Office Costs driver for Jan, Feb, and March. If you move your Last Close date to Apr, plans that were previously set to Jan through April will not get deleted. They will remain in Runway, accessible via the Plans section or any Plan timeline added to a page.

However, depending on your setup, your plans may or may not influence cells currently preceding your Last Close.

Here’s how it works in Runway:

If you’d manually added hardcoded values for months falling before Last Close, Runway will display those numbers. If not present:

Runway will rely on the Actuals Formula for drivers, or the integration data for databases connected to an integration. If not present:

Runway will use any hardcoded plans you'd created for those months before moving your Last Close date forward. If not present:

Runway will depend on the Forecast Formula.

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