RunSmart
Fathom
A Fathom Alternative for QuickBooks Advisory Firms
Fathom is built for reporting, analysis, and consolidated financial visibility. RunSmart is built to help firms turn QuickBooks month-end close work into forecasts, risk alerts, and client-ready advisory reports.
How Fathom and RunSmart Are Fundamentally Different
The Core Question:
Do you primarily need management reporting and financial analysis, or a repeatable way to turn QuickBooks close work into forward-looking advisory insights? That distinction explains many of the differences between the two platforms.
Who Each Platform Is Built For
Each platform is designed around a different workflow. Understanding who it is built for is often the fastest way to determine which one fits your firm’s needs.
Key Difference — Reporting vs Advisory Workflow
Both platforms help firms work with financial data, but they support different parts of the advisory process. Fathom is strong when the goal is to analyze, benchmark, consolidate, and present financial performance. RunSmart is built around the workflow that happens after month-end close, when firms need to review client performance, identify risks, refresh forecasts, and prepare advisory conversations.
Operational Planning Is Where the Tools Diverge Most
Understanding performance is important, but many client conversations quickly become forward-looking. Firms are often asked whether a client can afford to hire, increase spending, take on debt, pursue growth, or absorb margin pressure. This is where the difference between reporting-led advisory and decision-led planning becomes more apparent.
Business Health & Insights
Financial reports show what happened, but firms also need to know what the numbers may be signaling. The value comes from quickly understanding where a client is improving, where risk may be building, and which financial changes are worth a deeper conversation.
Summary Comparision
If you’re still unsure which platform is the better fit, this quick comparison summarizes the biggest differences at a glance.
Decision Factor
Choose Fathom If…
Choose RunSmart If…
Primary User
You are an accountant, CFO, advisor, or finance team focused on reporting and analysis
You are an accounting, bookkeeping, or advisory firm serving QuickBooks clients
Main Goal
Reporting, benchmarking, analysis, and consolidation
Turning month-end close into forecasts, insights, alerts, budgets, and advisory reports
Comfort with Finance
Your team wants flexible reporting and KPI analysis tools
Your team wants automated insights that reduce manual review and spreadsheet work
Entity Structure
You need multi-entity consolidation or benchmark groups
You primarily work with single-entity QuickBooks clients
Output Style
Management reports, dashboards, KPI analysis, and benchmarking
Client-ready advisory reports, forecasts, health scores, and risk alerts
Planning Focus
Forecasting and cash flow planning within a reporting-led workflow
Operational decision planning around hiring, payroll, expenses, financing, and growth
Conclusion
Fathom and RunSmart are not substitutes in the traditional sense. They reflect two different workflows.
Understanding that difference usually makes the choice clear. If your firm needs polished management reporting, benchmarking, and consolidated reporting, Fathom may be the better fit. If your firm wants a more automated way to identify which QuickBooks clients need attention, refresh forecasts after close, surface financial risks, and prepare advisory reports without building spreadsheets manually, RunSmart may be the better fit.
Disclaimer
This comparison is based on publicly available information and our understanding of each platform’s intended use cases. Product features, pricing, packaging, and capabilities may change over time. Please review each provider’s website for the most current information.
Real insights. Real decisions.
Frequent Asked Questions
More asnswers to common questions about how RunSmart works and what you can expect.
Many FP&A platforms are built for dedicated finance teams and require significant setup, configuration, and ongoing financial modeling. RunSmart is designed to give business owners powerful financial intelligence and planning capabilities without the complexity of traditional FP&A software.
Simply connect your QuickBooks account and RunSmart automatically analyzes your financial performance, generates forecasts and insights, monitors your financial health, tracks budgets, and produces professional reports without requiring you to build or maintain complicated financial models.
No. RunSmart is designed to make complex financial information easier to understand, even if you don't have a background in finance or accounting.
Plain-language insights, helpful tooltips, and an extensive library of help articles explain financial concepts and results throughout the platform. RunSmart also includes an AI-powered chatbot that can answer questions and explain unfamiliar financial concepts in simple terms whenever you need additional help.
RunSmart's forecasts are built from your historical QuickBooks data using advanced statistical forecasting techniques widely used by Fortune 500 organizations. Instead of relying on simple growth assumptions or fixed percentage increases, RunSmart automatically selects and applies statistical forecasting models tailored to your business's historical data to produce more reliable financial forecasts.
By continuously analyzing historical business performance, RunSmart generates rolling financial forecasts that help you evaluate hiring, pricing, borrowing, spending, expansion, and other important business decisions with greater confidence.
Standard and Premium plan users can begin using RunSmart with less than 24 consecutive months of QuickBooks history. While financial forecasting will not be available until 24 months of historical data are available, you can still analyze your historical financial performance, monitor your business's financial health, review key financial metrics, compare your performance against industry benchmarks, and generate professional reports.
Once your business reaches 24 consecutive months of historical QuickBooks data, financial forecasting is automatically enabled. This allows RunSmart's statistical forecasting models to identify longer-term trends and seasonal patterns, helping produce more reliable forecasts.
Pro plan users require at least 24 consecutive months of historical QuickBooks data before using RunSmart. The Pro plan is designed for businesses that need advanced forecasting, scenario planning, budgeting, workforce planning, automated reporting, and other forward-looking financial planning capabilities, all of which depend on sufficient historical data to produce reliable results.
No. RunSmart is intentionally designed for single-entity businesses and does not support consolidating multiple companies or budgeting by class.
RunSmart focuses on helping firms analyze each client independently so trends, risks, and performance changes are easier to detect, explain, and address.
At this time, RunSmart only supports QuickBooks Online.
