RunSmart

LivePlan

The Best Small Business Financial Planning Alternative

Choosing between LivePlan and RunSmart comes down to how you use your financial data and what decisions you want to make. Both platforms help you plan for the future, but they approach financial planning from different angles and are optimized for different user needs. This page helps explain those differences so you can decide which approach fits your needs.

How LivePlan and RunSmart Are Fundamentally Different

The Core Question:

Do you primarily need a structured business plan and budgeting framework, or do you need ongoing, operational, decision-focused financial planning and forecasting? That distinction explains most of the differences between the two platforms.

Who Each Platform Is Built For

Each platform is designed for a different type of user and workflow. Understanding who it’s built for is often the fastest way to determine which one fits your needs.

When LivePlan Is the Better Fit

LivePlan is best suited for small business owners who:

Want a step-by-step business planning workflow

Are mainly focused on business plan creation

Need tools for startup planning and forecasting (StartSmart by Projection Genie can help here)

Benefit from guided templates

Prefer a line-item planning approach with visual narratives

LivePlan excels at:

Business plan creation

Basic budget building and projections using manual inputs

Visual narrative reporting (e.g., for investors)

Structured walkthroughs for planning

If your primary goal is to build a business plan, create a budget, or prepare financial projections with manual inputs and structured templates, LivePlan is often the right choice.

When RunSmart Is the Better Fit

RunSmart is better suited for small business owners who:

Are managing an active business, not just creating one-time plans or projections

Want help making real operational decisions, not just not just building plans or projections

Need to evaluate tangible business choices, such as:

Hiring employees

Increasing marketing spend

Taking on debt

Prefer detailed insights and health assessments instead of planning templates

RunSmart emphasizes:

Forward-looking operational planning

Scenario-based decision support

Ongoing business health tracking

Planning tools tied directly to your forecast

If your primary goal is to understand where your business stands today and decide what to do next, RunSmart is typically the better fit

Key Difference: Structured Planning vs Decision Support

LivePlan

LivePlan’s Orientation

“What should our business plan look like?”

“How do the numbers fit into our pitch or budget?”

“Which benchmarks align with our industry?”

RunSmart

RunSmart’s Orientation

“Is my business financially healthy right now?”

“How does this proposed hiring plan affect cash flow?”

“Can I afford this loan?”

“How much marketing spend is sustainable?”

Both platforms support planning, but they answer very different questions.

Operational Planning Is Where the Tools Diverge Most

LivePlan

Structured templates for budgeting and business plan creation

Emphasizes comparative planning and industry benchmarks

Primarily answers “how should this be planned?”

RunSmart

Includes planners specifically for:

Hiring & payroll impact

Marketing spend

Loans and debt

Models how those decisions affect:

Cash flow

Profitability

Business health over time

This makes RunSmart more useful when financial planning is tied directly to day-to-day business decisions, not just planning documents.

Business Health: Interpretation vs Insight

Another difference is how insight is delivered:

LivePlan

LivePlan provides structured planning, projections, and comparisons to industry benchmarks, leaving interpretation primarily to the user.

RunSmart

RunSmart translates financial signals into business health assessments that highlight risk, stability, or improvement over time.

This distinction matters most for business owners who want clear, detailed insight instead of navigating templates and benchmarks on their own.

Summary Comparison

Decision Factor

Choose LivePlan If…

Choose RunSmart If…

Primary User

Business Owner, startup, budget creator

Business Owner / Operator

Main Goal

Structured business planning

Planning & decisions

Comfort with Finance

Medium to high

Low to moderate

Planning Focus

Templates & benchmarks

Operational decisions

Output Style

Business plans and budgets

Actionable guidance

Decision Support

Ongoing decisions & planning

Direct insight & guidance

Conclusion

LivePlan and RunSmart are not substitutes in the traditional sense — they reflect two different approaches to financial planning:

LivePlan focuses on business plan creation, budgeting, and structured templates

RunSmart focuses on forward-looking, decision-oriented guidance for small business owners

Understanding that difference usually makes the choice clear.

Disclaimer

This comparison is based on publicly available information and our understanding of each platform’s intended use cases. Product features and capabilities may change over time.

Real insights. Real decisions.

"What impressed me most is how easy it is. I don't have to build complex models again."

Brad Kingsford

CPA

"I can scan my entire client base and quickly spot where margins are projected to tighten without digging into each set of financials."

Ashley Chen

CPA

"I’m not building models or digging through reports anymore—it’s already laid out for me."

Brian O’Connor

CFO

"I don’t have to rebuild models just to answer basic ‘what happens if this changes’ questions."

Samantha Lee

Bookkeeper

"I save a ton of time on monthly reviews now. Most of the work is already done when I log in."

Daniel Brooks

Accounting Firm Owner

"It’s straightforward and easy to use. I didn’t have to spend time figuring things out."

Michael Patel

Small Business Owner

"Portfolio View is probably my favorite part. I can quickly see what’s going on across all my clients."

Misty Callen

Senior Advisor

"The forecasting alone is a game changer. I don't have to build or model anything manually and its so much more reliable then what I've seen from others."

Kassi Ramirez

Fractional CFO

Frequent Asked Questions

More asnswers to common questions about how RunSmart works and what you can expect.

How do you compare against other financial planning & analysis (FP&A) software?

While many FP&A platforms are built for finance teams and focus heavily on reporting, dashboards, and complex modeling, RunSmart is designed to turn your QuickBooks data into practical financial insights you can actually use. It helps you understand what is happening in your business, identify potential financial risks, and forecast how decisions around hiring, spending, pricing, borrowing, or growth may impact cash flow, profitability, and long-term performance.

Instead of requiring you to build complicated spreadsheets or navigate enterprise-level planning tools, RunSmart automatically generates forecasts, health assessments, scenarios, budgets, and plain-language insights that make financial planning more approachable.

The result is a platform built to help small businesses understand their numbers, plan with more confidence, and make smarter decisions without the cost, complexity, or overhead of traditional FP&A software.

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Do I need a strong background in finance to use RunSmart?

Not at all. RunSmart is designed to be easy to use. We handle all calculations and generate forecasts automatically so you don’t have to. That said, to deliver reliable results, your books need to be clean, up to date, and properly categorized every month. If you’re unsure about your bookkeeping quality, we recommend working with a professional bookkeeper to get things in order first.

What makes RunSmart’s forecasts more reliable than other tools?

RunSmart’s forecasts are built to support real business decisions, not just generate projections. Instead of relying on simplified assumptions, RunSmart uses advanced statistical models that account for seasonality, long term trends, and volatility in your historical QuickBooks data.

By continuously analyzing performance patterns and financial shifts, RunSmart produces rolling forecasts that reflect how your business actually behaves. The result is forward looking projections you can confidently use to evaluate hiring, pricing, borrowing, and growth decisions.

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My business has been operational for less than 2 years; can I still use RunSmart?

To ensure reliable forecasts, we require a minimum of 2 consecutive years of historical financial data in your QuickBooks Online account to use RunSmart. Anything less than 2 years does not provide enough data to identify seasonal patterns or trends effectively.

Does RunSmart support consolidations or class tracking for budgeting?

No. RunSmart is intentionally designed for single-entity businesses and does not support consolidating multiple companies or budgeting by class.

In many startups and small businesses, consolidating financial data or budgeting across multiple classes can make it harder to clearly identify where issues are developing. RunSmart focuses on analyzing each business independently so trends, risks, and performance changes are easier to detect and address.

These types of consolidation and class-level budgeting tools are typically designed for large finance teams managing complex corporate structures. RunSmart instead prioritizes clear forecasts, financial diagnostics, and decision insights that founders, business owners, and advisors can quickly understand and act on—without the added complexity of enterprise finance features.

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I don’t use QuickBooks Online for my business. Can I still use RunSmart?

At this time, we currently only support an integration with QuickBooks Online.

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