Draft forecasts live — conversational updates in build
A budget you can talk to.
Tell Charlie what you expect — a client starting in March, a hire in Q3, a new vehicle on a loan — and the budget, the forecast and the balance sheet move together. Built from your own books, kept honest against them every month.
What you get
Version control you can trust
The approved 2026 Budget stays locked. Forecast 1 (1+11), Forecast 2 (2+10) and every later reforecast sit beside it, along with the working copy, so you always know which version a statement is showing.
Built on the real mechanics of your business
Decades of forecasting experience behind the drivers that matter: professional fees, personnel and burden, phased client starts, not plugs.
Reforecasts that explain themselves
Each new forecast shows what changed since the last one, and why: a slower start for a new client, a price increase, a hire pushed out.
Investments that reach the balance sheet
Equipment, a loan, an owner distribution: they show up in cash and on the balance sheet, not just as a line in the P&L.
How it works
- 01
Start from your ledger
Charlie builds a baseline from your year-to-date pace at the expense-group level (payroll, occupancy, marketing), not hundreds of accounts.
- 02
Say what you know
Typed or spoken: revenue expectations, expense changes, hires, purchases. Charlie restates each one as an explicit assumption.
- 03
Review and lock
Nothing changes until you confirm it. The budget locks on approval; later changes become numbered reforecasts, never edits to the budget.
- 04
Compare every month
Actual vs budget vs latest forecast vs prior forecast, with closed months rolling from forecast to actual automatically.
What a conversation looks like
You
We signed a new retainer at $15,000 a month starting in February, and we're hiring a senior account lead in April at about $110,000.
Charlie
Got it. I'll add $165,000 of revenue for February through December and $82,500 of compensation for April onward, plus payroll taxes and benefits at your current rate of about 24%. Full-year EBITDA moves up roughly $60,000. Should this go into the working copy for Forecast 2, or do you want to see it as a scenario first?
Why it is not another budgeting tool
Versions that don't blur together
Most budgeting software makes it hard to tell the locked budget from last month's forecast from today's draft. Here each one is named, dated and comparable.
People modeled sensibly
Compensation and a burden rate, not a hundred-line personnel table that is wrong by February.
Tied to net income
Every forecast starts from books that tie to your trial balance. Differences get flagged, never buried.
Back into your own systems
Approved versions are being built to export at account level for QuickBooks, NetSuite or your reporting tool.
What it takes to start
- — Your general ledger and one month-end trial balance
- — What you already know about the year ahead: clients, hires, big purchases
- — A conversation to agree the few drivers that matter, and how often you reforecast
Where this stands
Statements and a draft full-year estimate from year-to-date pace are working today. The locked budget, numbered reforecasts, conversational updates and account-level export are being built now with our first companies. Charlie is an AI-enabled analyst: every assumption it records is shown to you for approval first.
Related
Need the budget split by salesperson or practice, or fed back into your accounting system? See financial systems & process design.
Start with next year's biggest unknown.
Tell Charlie what you expect to change and what worries you. A few minutes, typed or spoken, then pick a time to meet.