Clockwork builds your baseline forecast for you from up to 3 years of accounting history. It weights recent months more heavily and picks up trends and seasonality, so if your business isn't changing much, the baseline is usually pretty close.

What it can't see is what you're planning. If you're raising prices, hiring, adding a service line, or cutting a cost, add an Assumption. An Assumption is a rule on one account for a date range you choose, and it replaces the baseline for that account during that period.

You can edit or remove an Assumption whenever you want. Remove it and the account goes back to the baseline. Anyone with edit access can make changes, and View Only users can see Assumptions but can't edit them.

Once you save, the Financial Model recalculates and the change carries through to your Cash Flow Forecast, Balance Sheet, and Metrics.

There are four types. Most accounts only need one.

Grows the account by a set rate each month, quarter, or year. This works well for steady revenue growth or costs that go up on a schedule, like rent.

For example, if you expect service revenue to grow 3% a month after a January price increase, set the range to January through December and enter 3% monthly.

Ties the account to another account as a percentage. Use it for costs that move with revenue, like COGS, commissions, or card processing fees.

If COGS usually runs around 35% of revenue, set COGS to 35% of your revenue account. When you change your revenue forecast later, COGS follows automatically.

Enter a price and a quantity for each period and Clockwork multiplies them. It's the easiest way to forecast subscriptions, memberships, units sold, or billable hours.

A $150 monthly membership growing from 200 to 260 members over six months is just $150 as the price, with the member count ramping up month by month.

When none of the other three fit, build your own formula. Create your variables (dollar amounts, percentages, or plain numbers), choose how they combine (+, -, x, or ÷), and enter values for each period.

You can also use Custom Variables in a formula. These are non-financial numbers you track in Clockwork, like customer count or number of locations.

You don't need to type every month. Enter a value, then use Auto-Fill (the green arrow between cells) to carry it forward. It handles values that stay flat, grow by a percentage, or grow by a fixed amount.

You can combine rules inside one Assumption by adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing them.

Say marketing normally runs 5% of revenue, but you also have a $20,000 trade show in June. Stack a 5% of revenue rule with a Custom Formula that adds $20,000 in June.

Payroll is usually the biggest expense, so it's worth setting up carefully. If you want to plan by role, start date, salary, and benefits, use the Headcount Planner. It feeds your payroll accounts for you, including taxes and benefits.

If you'd rather use an Assumption, set up a Custom Formula on your Salaries or Wages account in one of three ways:

Your Cash Flow Forecast follows your P&L, but cash moves on your collection and payment timing. A revenue increase in March might not show up as cash until April or May, depending on how fast your customers usually pay.

Assumptions apply to whichever scenario you're in. To try out a plan without touching your live forecast, build it in the Scenario Planner. You can compare scenarios against the baseline and apply one to your live model when you're ready.

Check that you're in the right scenario and that the months you're looking at fall inside the Assumption's date range. Bigger changes can also take a moment to recalculate. If it still looks off, see Why Isn't My Data Updating?

Need help? Reach out to our support chat in the bottom right of your screen any time.