RunSmart

Spotlight Reporting

The Best Small Business Financial Planning Alternative

Choosing between Spotlight Reporting and RunSmart comes down to how you use financial data and what decisions you need to support. Both tools help you understand your finances better, but they are designed for very different purposes and workflows. This page helps explain those differences so you can decide which approach best fits your needs.

How Spotlight Reporting and RunSmart Are Fundamentally Different

The Core Question:

Do you primarily need polished financial reporting and consolidated dashboards, or practical, forward-looking planning and decision support? 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 Spotlight Reporting Is the Better Fit

Spotlight Reporting is best suited for users who:

Need standardized, presentation-ready financial reports

Prepare reports for boards, investors, or stakeholders

Consolidate data across multiple entities and periods

Want professional dashboards and visual narratives

Are comfortable with finance professionals interpreting results

Spotlight Reporting excels at:

Multi-period financial reporting

Consolidated dashboards

Forecast reporting in a presentation format

Visual storytelling with financial data

If your primary goal is to communicate historical performance and trends clearly to others — especially across multiple entities — Spotlight Reporting is often the right choice.

When RunSmart Is the Better Fit

RunSmart is better suited for users who:

Are small business owners or accountants, not reporting specialists

Want help planning forward, not just reviewing results

Need support evaluating real operational decisions, such as:

Hiring employees

Increasing marketing spend

Taking on debt

Prefer guided insights and health indicators instead of interpreting financial reports

RunSmart emphasizes:

Forward-looking planning

Scenario-based decision-making

Ongoing business health assessments

Operational planning tied directly to forecasts

If your primary goal is to understand where your business stands today and make confident next-step decisions, RunSmart is typically the better fit.

Key Difference: Structured Planning vs Decision Support

Spotlight Reporting

Spotlight Reporting’s Orientation

“How can I present financial performance clearly?”

“Which visuals and consolidated views do stakeholders need?”

“What’s the story behind the numbers for this period?”

RunSmart

RunSmart’s Orientation

“Is my business financially healthy right now?”

“Can I afford this loan?”

“How much marketing spend is sustainable?”

“What happens if I hire now?”

Both platforms use financial data — but they focus on different questions and outcomes.

Operational Planning Is Where the Tools Diverge Most

Spotlight Reporting

Provides professional reports and dashboards

Emphasizes presentation and consolidated views

Answers “how should this be reported?”

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 outcomes are tied directly to day-to-day decisions and planning, not just reporting.

Business Health: Interpretation vs Insight

Another difference is how each platform delivers insight:

Spotlight Reporting

Spotlight Reporting presents performance through dashboards and narrative reports that must be interpreted for action.

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, guided insight instead of navigating templates and benchmarks on their own.

Summary Comparison

Decision Factor

Choose Spotlight Reporting If…

Choose RunSmart If…

Primary User

Finance or reporting teams

Business Owners and Accountants

Main Goal

Communicate performance clearly

Plan & make decisions

Comfort with Finance

High

Low to moderate

Entity Structure

Single or multiple entities

Single business

Output Style

Polished reports & dashboards

Actionable guidance

Planning Focus

Retrospective analysis

Operational decisions

Final Thought

Spotlight Reporting and RunSmart are not substitutes in the traditional sense — they reflect two distinct approaches to financial data:

Spotlight Reporting focuses on presentation-ready reporting and consolidated visualization.

RunSmart focuses on forward-looking planning and decision support 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?

RunSmart is built specifically for small business owners who need a clear understanding of where their business stands today and how decisions will shape what comes next. While many FP&A platforms emphasize dashboards and complex configuration, RunSmart focuses on turning your QuickBooks data into practical financial intelligence you can act on.

It continuously analyzes historical performance, highlights meaningful financial shifts, and provides a clear view of your current financial health across profitability, cash flow, and growth. At the same time, it generates forward-looking forecasts that help you evaluate the financial impact of hiring, pricing changes, borrowing, or expansion before committing capital.

The result is a platform designed to help you understand your business today, plan confidently for tomorrow, and make informed decisions without the overhead of traditional enterprise tools.

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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 first to get things in order.

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 small 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 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 small 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 small business. Can I still use RunSmart?

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

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Put your financial data to work with a platform built to forecast performance, evaluate decisions, and gain clearer financial direction for your business.

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