If you’re a small business using Pipedrive on the Growth plan or higher, you already know the value of its sales forecasting view for projecting pipeline revenue and planning for growth. Pipedrive takes your open deals, expected close dates, and win probabilities to generate a forward-looking forecast — giving you visibility into how much revenue you can expect over the coming months.
But there’s a challenge: while Pipedrive helps you see where sales might be headed, it’s not designed to tell you how those expected sales impact your overall financial performance — such as profitability, cash flow, or long-term sustainability. Traditionally, that kind of analysis required a CFO. With RunSmart by Projection Genie, you get CFO-quality financial insights in an easy-to-use platform built for small business owners, not finance teams.
To make it work, you’ll need QuickBooks Online with at least 24 months of historical data. RunSmart pulls directly from your accounting system to link your Pipedrive sales forecasts with expenses, cash flow, and other financials — giving you a complete picture automatically.
Why Extend Pipedrive’s Forecasts Beyond Sales?
For small business owners, revenue growth on its own doesn’t guarantee a healthy business. A projected spike in sales may look great in isolation, but once you factor in the realities of scaling, the picture changes quickly:
- Hiring plans and payroll – Sales growth often means expanding your team. RunSmart can forecast payroll automatically by analyzing past hiring data (if available in QuickBooks). If a correlation with revenue exists, it adjusts payroll forecasts so they scale with your sales trajectory.
- Sales and marketing efficiency – More sales usually require more investment. Advertising, commissions, outreach, and events can all consume cash faster than deals close. RunSmart checks whether these costs correlate with revenue growth. If they do, it scales them alongside your Pipedrive forecast; if not, it applies advanced forecasting methods to project realistic spend.
- Operating costs that scale with customers – Customer support, infrastructure, and third-party tools often climb in lockstep with sales volume, reducing margins. RunSmart adjusts forecasts automatically where a correlation exists; otherwise, it applies advanced forecasting to project future costs.
RunSmart doesn’t just map these costs independently — it blends historical data, correlations, and forecasting models to show how pipeline growth actually impacts your full business, not just top-line revenue.
How to Bring Your Pipedrive Forecast Into RunSmart
RunSmart makes it simple:
- Confirm You Have Access to Pipedrive’s Forecast View
Make sure your company is on the Growth plan or higher, since the Forecast View is not available on Pipedrive’s Lite plan. - Access Your Forecast in Pipedrive
Open Pipedrive’s Forecast View to see your sales forecast. Pipedrive automatically provides this forecast based on deal values, expected close dates, and stage probabilities. - Manually Enter Your Forecast Into RunSmart
On RunSmart’s Sales Forecast page, create a custom forecast and enter the monthly revenue from your Pipedrive forecast. If most of your deals close within a year, we recommend selecting a 1-year forecast period in RunSmart so your inputs align. If your pipeline extends further, you can choose a 3-year or 5-year forecast period. And if your Pipedrive forecast doesn’t reach that far, you have the option to use RunSmart’s own forecasting models to extend projections up to 5 years. - Run Your Full 3-Statement Forecast
RunSmart then automatically builds out your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow forecasts by combining your QuickBooks data with the sales numbers you entered from Pipedrive. This turns your pipeline forecast into a complete financial roadmap with KPIs, charts, health scores, and more.
Go Beyond Forecasting: From Pipeline Projections to Full Business Insights
Once your Pipedrive forecast is in RunSmart, you can go beyond sales-only forecasting to see the bigger financial picture:
- Health scores powered by your sales forecast
RunSmart combines your projected sales with expense, payroll, and operating costs in QuickBooks to calculate five key health scores: Profitability, Liquidity, Efficiency, Solvency, and Capitalization. This turns sales-only forecasts into a complete view of your company’s financial health. - Create a budget grounded in your revenue outlook
Your Pipedrive forecast becomes the foundation for a practical budget, helping you plan hiring, spending, and investments in line with your projected sales. - Track progress and stay accountable
As actuals come in from QuickBooks, RunSmart shows how you’re performing against both the budget and the sales expectations set in Pipedrive. Variances are flagged early so you can adjust before small issues become big problems.
What You Get by Pairing Pipedrive with RunSmart
By using both together, small business can:
- See how pipeline-driven sales forecasts affect cash runway
- Understand whether hiring and spend plans are sustainable
- Identify early risks with financial health scores
- Turn forecasts into budgets and track progress with variance analysis
- Get CFO-quality insights — in a platform designed for small business owners, not CFOs
In short, Pipedrive tells you where sales could go based on pipeline forecasts. But to understand what that really means for your business, RunSmart builds on your Pipedrive and QuickBooks data — doing the heavy lifting to transform it into full financial forecasts, health scores, budgets, and progress tracking, so you can make smarter, data-driven decisions to fuel growth.
Ready to see how your Pipedrive sales forecasts play out in real financial terms? Try RunSmart today.
