Glossary

Definitions of the core terms used throughout Prune. Each entry is self-contained, so you can read any one without having read the others.

Account

A category in your chart of accounts (for example, “Software Subscriptions” or “Total Income”). Accounts are synced from your accounting software or bank connection and organize your transactions on the Financial Report. Parent accounts roll up their child accounts into a total.

Actuals

Historical financial figures that have already happened, synced from your connected data source. Actuals appear in past months on the Financial Report. Contrast with Forecasts. In formulas, reference past actuals with x - n (for example, x - 1 is last month).

Branch

A copy of your financial plan that you can edit independently. Your Main branch is your base plan. Additional branches are used as Scenarios. You can update a branch with the latest Main changes (Rebase) or replace Main with a branch (Promote).

Burn

Your net spending over a period — how much cash the company is using. Several runway calculations are based on your last month’s (or last three months’) net income, which represents burn when it’s negative.

Chart of Accounts

The full list of accounts used to categorize your financials, synced from QuickBooks Online, Xero, or your bank connection. It forms the row structure of your Financial Report.

Data Group

A set of data you add to a chart — for example, a Financial Report account or a model variable. A single chart can contain more than one data group, and each can be re-colored, inverted (sign reversed), or removed. You must add at least one data group to create a chart.

Forecasts

Projected future figures, as opposed to historical Actuals. Forecasts appear in future months on the Financial Report and come from your Hiring Plan, Models, and budgets. In formulas, reference future forecasts with x + n (for example, x + 1 is next month).

Formula

A type of model Variable that calculates a value from inputs and other variables. Formulas can reference Financial Report accounts, Hiring Plan figures, other formulas, and themselves (a self-reference defaults to the previous month’s value). Each formula is itself a variable that can be referenced elsewhere.

Hiring Plan

The feature for tracking current employees and contractors and planning future hires. It feeds payroll costs into your forecast and exposes headcount, salary, and new-hire figures as variables you can use in Models.

Input

A type of model Variable that holds a key assumption or driver. Input types include Number, Percentage, Currency, Month, Import (from Google Sheets), and List (a manually entered value per month).

Main branch

Your base financial plan — the scenario you consider most likely to happen. Other Scenarios branch off from Main. You can protect the Main branch so that changes must go through a pull request before taking effect.

Model

A customizable workspace for building forecasts that aren’t already coming from your books — revenue, KPIs, per-employee costs, and more. A model is built from Variables (Inputs, Formulas, and Outputs) and has its own date range.

Opening Balance

The starting balance of an account, set manually. Used mainly when you connect banks or credit cards directly to Prune; not recommended when you use QuickBooks Online or Xero, which supply balances through the sync.

Org Chart

A view of your employees and contractors arranged as an organization hierarchy, based on your Hiring Plan.

Output

A type of model Variable that maps a formula’s value onto a specific account on the Financial Report. Deleting an output removes that value from the Financial Report but leaves the underlying formula intact.

Promote

The action of converting a Scenario branch into your Main branch, replacing your base plan with that scenario. Useful when a planned scenario becomes your actual situation.

Rebase

The action of updating a Scenario branch with the latest changes from Main. Rebasing replaces variables on the branch that you haven’t edited (forecasts, employees, contractors, models) with the current Main values.

Runway

The number of months until your cash reaches zero. Prune offers several calculation methods (default, startup, startup 3-month average, and no-growth) that trade accuracy against simplicity. See Runway Chart Settings for the trade-offs of each.

Scenario

An alternative version of your plan, created as a Branch, used to explore possibilities such as best/worst case sales, fundraising plans, or sensitivity analysis — without changing your base plan. Scenarios can be compared on the Dashboard.

Tag

A label applied to transactions so you can filter them or run custom reports. Department tags are a special built-in type used by the Hiring Plan: assigning employees and contractors to departments labels their costs automatically.

Time Segment

A portion of a formula’s timeline that uses different functions from other periods. Time segments must be continuous, with no gaps or overlaps; the formula falls back to the model date range where no segment is defined.

Variable

The building block of a Model. Variables are time series and come in three types: Inputs (assumptions), Formulas (calculations), and Outputs (values mapped to the Financial Report). Variable names must be unique within their type across all models.

Variable Offset (x, x − n, x + n)

The notation used in formulas to reference a variable’s value in a given month. x is the current month, x - n is n months in the past (actuals), and x + n is n months in the future (forecasts).