Runway glossary – Runway Help Center

Block

Different type of dataset configurations created from the basis of your model. There are five types of blocks in Runway:

Driver Chart

Driver Grid

Object Table

Plan Timeline

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Database

A database table designed to store and forecast granular data that changes over time.

Driver

The main modeling building block in your model. Contains timeseries data and represents a specific metric.

e.g. “Revenue” or “Expenses”

Dimension

A breakdown of a driver.

e.g:

You could break down the Driver “Revenue” by “Region”, and thus “Region” would be a Dimension of “Revenue”

You could break down the Driver “Expenses” by “Team”, and thus “Team” would be a Dimension of “Expenses”

Dimensional Driver

Any Driver that has Dimensions.

e.g. You may have a Driver “Revenue”, and once you add a Dimension like “Region” or “Team”, it becomes a Dimensional Driver.

Subdriver

A Driver broken down by Dimension(s).

e.g. whereas “Expenses” might be a Driver, we might show “Expenses by Team”, in which case the following would be Subdrivers: “Expenses [Engineering]”, “Expenses [Sales]”, “Expenses [Marketing”, etc.

Dimensional Driver

A driver that is used in the same way for multiple dimensions of business. For example, the driver Team Expenses might be calculated the same way for multiple different departments. In this case. Team Expenses would be the dimensional driver and Department would be the dimension.

Driver Chart

Graph view of specified driver(s)

Driver Grid

Table of specified driver(s) with view of actual and forecasted values. The driver grid mirrors that which you are able to see in the Modeling tab, in that you can edit formulas and customize the visible columns from the driver grid.

Goal

A target that can be set on any driver. This can be a target value that you want to stay above, for something like cash balance, or a value that you want to stay below, for something like gross margin. Dates can be added optionally.

KPI

Key Performance Indicator; a metric that you look at to gauge the success and trends of your business.

Page

A configurable canvas in Runway for you to create specific views of your finances and forecasts using blocks.

Object

A specific type of driver that is more granular, complex, and customizable than a dimensional driver that you use to forecast a more complex entity around. In reusing the department planning example, if forecasting for the team as a whole, leveraging dimensions makes the most sense because there is typically a small number of them. If you want to break that down further, however, to forecast headcount planning, the granularity of planning against individual employees is a great use case for objects.

When planning for headcount, each employee typically has the same associated attribute fields (i.e. salary, start date, department) but with different values. When adding a new employee, we template them as objects, so they can be leveraged the same way by the model but still stand on their own, as needed.

Plan

Any changes or assumptions made to forecasted values in your model that don’t come directly from the forecast formula.

Plan Timeline

Forecasted changes to your model as shown in a calendar-relative view.

Main Scenario

The base version of your Runway workspace, including your model and its formulas, plans, etc. Any time changes are made, you will automatically be taken to a draft version of the Operating Plan, which you can choose to save as a new scenario, discard, or merge with the main Operating Plan.

Scenario

A version of the Main Scenario. Changes to the model made in a scenario will not affect that which is saved in the main Operating Plan unless merged.