[Beta] Scenario settings – Runway Help Center

Interested in getting access? Let your CXM know, or ping @Nadine Mansour in Slack.

What is the problem we're trying to solve?

Finance teams regularly create multiple forecast versions (bear, base, bull), review them with their team, and need to lock them as reference points for future comparisons.

Until now, Snapshots have been the primary tool for this in Runway. You can create a Snapshot by clicking the star next to any change in the Activity Log.

This approach has several limitations you may have encountered:

Snapshots only capture data from your Main Scenario—not from other Scenarios. The only workaround is merging your scenario into Main, which creates several problems.

Snapshots are unchangeable once created, yet teams often need to make minor adjustments to locked forecasts.

You can't view all your data within a snapshot—they only work for comparing against other Scenarios.

To address these limitations, we're introducing new Scenarios settings.

What is new?

For any Scenario, you now have the following settings:

Auto-update from Main

By default, a scenario automatically pulls in updates from Main that don't conflict with the scenario's changes, including integration sync changes.

You can now toggle this off to disable auto-update from Main.

You can toggle this back on only if you haven't made edits to the scenario after turning it off. Once you make changes, you cannot re-enable auto-update.

Allow merging

By default, Admins can merge any Scenario into Main. When merged, the scenario's changes will be reflected in Main, and the Scenario will no longer exist as a standalone.

You can now toggle this off to prevent merging and ensure the scenario remains separate.

Who can edit

By default, any user with edit access to a page, model, or database can make edits across all scenarios they can view.

You can now change this setting to prevent anyone from making changes to a scenario.

Who can view

This is not a new setting—it's the same as the former "Publish scenario" option.

By default, scenarios are visible only to Admins and the scenario creator.

You can change that so all users (Admins, Manager, Members) can see it.

How to put these settings into use?

Imagine you're working with your team on various forecasts for the new year (bear, base, bull). Each forecast is modeled in Runway as its own scenario.

After meeting with your team and getting everyone's approval, you want to lock these scenarios as reference points for upcoming monthly closes.

Instead of merging each scenario into Main first to take a snapshot, you can now simply adjust the settings of each forecast scenario:

Toggle off Auto-update from Main to prevent upcoming edits and integration syncs from changing your scenario.

For additional safety, you can optionally change Who can edit to No one to prevent unintentional edits from your team.

If you need to make adjustments to any forecast scenario later, you can temporarily enable Who can edit, make your changes, then disable it again.

Finally, if you want to preserve a version of your Main Scenario, you can create a new Scenario that will be an exact copy. You can then apply the settings described above to use it as a reference point.

Known issues

Please note that these settings are still in beta! If you encounter any unexpected behavior or have suggestions for improvement, we'd love to hear from you!

Our team is aware of and working to improve performance in these areas:

Toggling the Auto-update from Main on or off.

Switching between scenarios, especially if either the source or destination scenario has Auto-update from Main toggled off.

What's next?

UI improvements to the Scenarios picker and settings.

Performance enhancements for the areas mentioned above.

Improvements based on your feedback.

Over the next few weeks, we'll convert your existing Snapshots into Scenarios. These will have both Auto-update from Main and Who can edit settings disabled.