How it fits together
Every studio runs the same loop. You promise work for a price, you do the work, you bill for it, you collect the cash, and then you look at whether you made money. Finance is built around that loop, so once you know it you can find any screen.
Priced from the brief
Most tools ask someone to build the estimate line by line. In Runnit, Ru turns the brief into a plan, works out who does what, and prices each task from your rate card. You get a quote that shows where every number came from, and you can change any of it before it goes out.
- Optional lines and packages. The client can take a line or leave it, or pick one option from a package, so you can offer choices without writing three quotes.
- The client accepts online. They open a link, read the quote and accept it there. They don't need a Runnit login, and you keep a record of who signed and which version they saw.
- One press to convert. An accepted quote becomes the budget the job runs on, so nobody re-keys the numbers.
- Two prices side by side. Model a second scenario next to a quote or a budget, and promote the one that wins.
Budgets
A budget is a list of lines, each with a price, an estimate and a billing type. Your tasks map to those lines, so every hour logged counts against the right part of the budget and you can see it burning down while there's still time to do something about it. When a line goes over what was sold, you choose what happens: a warning, a block on new time, or work continues but nothing gets approved until a change order lands.
Change orders
When the client wants more, you write a change order with a reason, it gets approved internally, the client accepts it, and it's applied as a new version. Every version stays readable, so there's never an argument about what was agreed.
Retainers
Retainers repeat automatically. Each month (or week, or fortnight) gets its own budget with the agreed fee already on it. Unused hours roll over or expire, whichever you've chosen, and anything over the retainer is reported separately so you can decide whether to bill it.
Templates and the catalogue
Build one budget from a job you do often and reuse it. Catalogue items carry their own price and unit, so adding a common line is one pick instead of five fields.
What you can see
Every budget shows what you sold, what you've used, what you've committed to spend, what it cost and what's left as margin. The same figures roll up to the project and to any group of projects it belongs to, and you get a warning at the thresholds you set.
Time and costs
Time to billing
People fill in a weekly timesheet and submit it. Approvals happen per budget, and approved time goes into the uninvoiced work queue, grouped by client, budget and line and aged at 30, 60 and 90 days. You can hold, move or write off an entry before it's billed, so invoices go out clean.
Expenses
Upload a receipt and Ru reads it and fills in the claim for you to check. Split costs, mileage, daily allowances and costs you pass straight on to the client are all covered, and reimbursement runs produce a bank file you can upload straight to your bank.
Purchasing
Keep a supplier list, raise purchase orders, and match supplier bills against the order and what arrived. You can see what you've committed to spend before the bill turns up, which is where most job overruns hide.
Suppliers and freelancers
Suppliers get their own login to see their orders and upload bills, which arrive as proposals for you to accept. If you've agreed it with a freelancer, you can raise their tax invoice on their behalf each month, so they don't have to.
Invoices
Draft an invoice from the uninvoiced work queue or start from scratch. You can bill approved work, a milestone that's fallen due, a percentage of the budget, whatever's left, several budgets for one client on one document, or a one-off. When you issue it, it gets the next number in sequence and a frozen copy of what it said. If something's wrong you issue a credit note, so there's always a clean record and your accountant never has to ask what happened.
- Deposits, retention and payment plans. Hold money back or spread it out, and the history stays attached to the invoice.
- Chasing money. Receivables shows who owes you what and how late they are. Set up a reminder sequence once and it chases for you. Statements, promise dates and a hold on clients who are seriously overdue are all there, along with each client's average days to pay, which is the best predictor of your cash.
- Remittances and incoming bills. Send a PDF or a photo and Runnit reads it, matches it to the invoice it pays or the order it bills, and shows you the match to confirm. Nothing is recorded until you say so.
- The client portal. Your clients can see their invoices, credits and statements, accept quotes and change orders, and check what's left on a budget if you choose to share it. It doesn't cost you a seat.
Billed, earned, paid
You can bill a job in March, earn it in April and get paid in May. Finance keeps those three apart, which is why the Revenue screen and the Receivables screen show different numbers, and both are right. It also means your month-end figures hold up when your accountant looks at them.
Revenue recognition
Choose how each job's income counts towards a month, from seven methods. Runnit also tracks what you've done but not yet billed, and what you've billed but not yet done, and how old each of those is.
Forecast
See committed work, weighted pipeline and cash by week or by month. The cash line shows a likely range, based on how late each client pays in practice, so the forecast tells you what's likely rather than what's planned.
Reports
Eleven report families cover profitability, budget health, billing, receivables, payables, revenue, forecast, people, retainers, sales and compliance. Save a report, group it how you like, and have it sent daily, weekly or monthly by email, Slack or Teams.
Month end
A checklist tells you what's blocking the close and what's only advisory. Close the month and the numbers are frozen. You get a PDF close report and an export pack for your accountant, and bank statements import and match against payments and bills.
Who sees the money
The same budget shows different things to different people, depending on what their role is allowed to see (Runnit calls this a lens). Your account managers see prices without seeing cost, your producers see cost, and only the people who should see margin see margin.
| Lens | Shows | Typical holder |
|---|---|---|
| Hours | Time only. No money at all. | Members, freelancers |
| Prices | What the client pays. No cost, no margin. | Account managers |
| Cost | What the work costs you. | Producers, heads of department |
| Profit | Price, cost and margin together. | Owners, admins, the Finance role |
Finance also stops one person doing both halves of a risky job. Two people are needed to set up a bank account, nobody can approve their own expense, and Ru can't approve things on someone's behalf or sign for a client.
Ask Ru
Ru knows the Finance guides that ship with your version of Runnit and can read the records you're allowed to see. It'll explain a screen, find a figure or draft something for you, and it always asks before it changes anything. Try:
- "Which budgets are over 90% used?"
- "Draft an invoice for everything approved on the Summer campaign budget."
- "Why is the margin on this budget down from last week?"
- "Write a firm chaser for the two overdue invoices for this client."
- "Price this brief."
What's on today
Turning Finance on takes one form. We set up the company that issues your invoices, your tax rates, invoice numbering, the list of things you sell and your expense categories from it, then a checklist walks you through the rest. Australian tax rules are verified and ready. If you're somewhere else, we confirm your document rules with you before your first invoice goes out.
Card payments on invoices, Xero and QuickBooks sync, and e-invoicing over the Peppol network are built, but we're switching them on for one customer at a time while we test them properly. They're not self-serve yet. Ask us and we'll tell you where yours is up to.
Finance is included with Pro and Enterprise seats. Pro is $25 per person per month. You only need it for the people who run the money. Everyone else logs time on the seat they already have, and your clients never need a seat at all. See all plans.
The full walkthrough, from turning it on to closing your first month, is in the Finance setup guide and the pages beside it.
Try it on one of your jobs
- Sign up, add one Pro seat and turn Finance on.
- Add one of your clients: their brand guidelines, a couple of past campaigns and the rate card you charge them.
- Give Ru a brief and ask it to price the job.
- Send the quote to yourself, accept it on the web page the client would see, and turn it into a budget.
- Log an hour against a task, approve it, and draft the invoice from the uninvoiced work queue.
You'll have gone from brief to invoice on your own work in an afternoon.
Try it free
Start on the free plan and add a Pro seat when you're ready for the money side. Or book a demo and we'll walk you through it on your kind of work.
