Freelancer Runway

What is Runway?#

Runway is a financial dashboard built specifically for freelancers and independent contractors. It answers one question that every freelancer needs to know: if all my work dried up today, how long could I survive?

That number — your runway — is the foundation of every smart financial decision you make as a freelancer. Too short and you take bad-fit clients out of desperation. Long enough and you negotiate from confidence, say no to low-quality work, and invest in yourself.

Beyond the runway number, Runway helps you invoice clients, track expenses, manage your sales pipeline, model financial scenarios, and understand your business health — all in one place.

Your First 5 Minutes

Getting accurate numbers takes less than five minutes. Here's what to do when you first open the dashboard:

1. 1

   Enter your cash on hand

   Open the Financial Inputs widget and enter the total liquid cash across all accounts — checking, savings, anywhere you can access funds quickly.

2. 2

   Enter your monthly burn rate

   Add your total monthly expenses: rent, software subscriptions, equipment payments, insurance — everything you pay regularly to keep the lights on.

3. 3

   Add income sources

   Click "Add Income" on the Financial Inputs widget and add any ongoing income: a retainer client, a recurring project, part-time work. Only add reliable, recurring income.

4. 4

   Read your runway

   The Runway Clock now shows your baseline — how many months you can sustain yourself at this rate. Everything else in the app helps you understand and extend that number.

Key Concepts

Runway Clock#

The Runway Clock is the centerpiece of the dashboard — a large, clear display of how many months your current financial position can sustain you. It's designed to be glanceable: open the dashboard and immediately know where you stand.

The clock shows more than just the headline number. Below it you'll see:

• Cash on hand — your total liquid reserves
• Net monthly burn — expenses minus current income
• Pipeline potential — additional months your weighted pipeline could add

The color of the clock shifts with urgency: green for healthy runway (>6 months), yellow for caution (3–6 months), and red for critical (<3 months).

Burn Chart#

The Burn Chart turns the abstract runway number into a visual projection. It plots your estimated cash balance over time as a line graph — showing a curve that dips toward zero at the point your runway ends.

This visualization does something a number alone can't: it gives you a sense of the slope. A gentle slope means you have time. A steep drop creates urgency. A flat or rising line means you're in a great position.

Financial Inputs#

The Financial Inputs widget is where you update your core numbers: cash on hand and monthly burn rate. Changes here instantly recalculate everything on the dashboard — the runway clock, burn chart, income simulator, and more.

You can also manage your income sources here — ongoing retainers, recurring project work, or any predictable monthly income. Each source can be toggled active or inactive, which lets you model scenarios like losing a key client without permanently deleting the data.

Income Simulator#

The Income Simulator is a "what if I earned more?" calculator. Enter a hypothetical additional monthly income amount and instantly see how many extra months it would add to your runway.

Use it to evaluate specific decisions in real time:

• What would taking on a $2,000/month retainer do to my runway?
• How much would raising my rates by $500/month change things?
• Is it worth hustling for one more client this month?

The simulator does not save any data — it's a scratchpad. Use Scenarios to save and compare hypothetical states.

Income Patterns#

Income Patterns shows a visual breakdown of your income sources as a chart. Each active income source appears as a segment, letting you see at a glance how diversified your income is.

Income diversification is one of the most important risk factors for freelancers. A single client making up 80% of your income is fragile — one email can drop your runway from 12 months to 3. This chart makes concentration risk immediately visible.

Pipeline Card#

The Pipeline Card shows a summary of your active sales pipeline and its potential impact on your runway. It displays the total pipeline value, the weighted value (adjusted for probability), and how many additional months the weighted value represents at your current burn rate.

A $15,000 weighted pipeline with a $5,000/month burn rate adds 3 potential months to your runway. This number shows on the Runway Clock as the “pipeline potential” figure.

Goal Mode#

Goal Mode opens the Goal Calculator — a tool that works backwards from a target runway to tell you exactly how much additional monthly income you need.

Set a runway goal (e.g., “I want 12 months of runway”) and the calculator shows:

• How much additional monthly income would hit that goal
• How much you need to reduce monthly burn to hit it
• How much additional cash you'd need to save to hit it

It turns a vague goal into a concrete number — exactly the kind of clarity that drives action.

Tax Set Aside#

The Tax Set Aside widget tracks your estimated tax obligation. Based on the income you've entered and your tax rate (configured in Settings), it calculates how much of your cash should be reserved for taxes and compares that against what you currently have set aside.

This solves one of the most common financial mistakes freelancers make: spending money that's technically already owed to the government. When tax season arrives with a $12,000 bill and only $3,000 in savings, the consequences are severe.

Dry Months#

Dry Months highlights historical months where your income was zero or negative — months where expenses exceeded income. These are the lean months that erode your runway.

Patterns in dry months tell an important story. Do you regularly have a slow January? A weak summer? Knowing your historical dry periods lets you build cash reserves in advance and avoid scrambling when a predictably slow month arrives.

Alerts Banner#

The Alerts Banner appears at the top of the dashboard when your runway drops below a threshold you define in Settings. It's an early warning system — designed to surface urgency before a crisis, not during one.

Both thresholds are configurable in Settings → Alert Thresholds. If the banner is always showing, your thresholds may be set too high — adjust them to match your personal risk tolerance.

Invoices#

Create and send professional invoices to clients. Each invoice supports:

• Multiple line items with descriptions, quantities, and rates
• Tax and discounts applied at the invoice level
• Status tracking — Draft, Sent, Paid, Overdue
• Shareable client portal — send a secure link; no account required for your client to view
• Duplicate any invoice to quickly create a similar one

Invoices past their due date are automatically flagged as Overdue. Use the New Invoice floating button on the dashboard for the fastest path to a new invoice.

Recurring Invoices#

Set up invoices that generate automatically on a repeating schedule. Ideal for retainer clients or any work with a fixed billing cycle.

Configure once with the amount, billing frequency, client, and start date. Runway handles the rest — generating a new invoice each cycle without manual intervention.

Clients#

Your client directory keeps all client information in one place and automatically calculates a health score (A–F) for each client based on their payment behavior.

The health score is calculated from payment consistency, average days to pay, and invoice history. Use it to spot clients who are chronically late before they become a cashflow problem. At-risk clients also appear in the Reports page.

Pipeline#

Track potential work through a sales workflow with five stages:

Each opportunity has a value, a probability percentage, an expected close date, and optionally a linked client. Won opportunities can be converted directly to invoices — no re-entering data.

The pipeline feeds directly into the dashboard — your weighted pipeline value and its runway impact are always visible on the Pipeline Card and Runway Clock.

Expenses#

Log and categorize your business expenses. Mark expenses as recurring to track monthly obligations separately from one-off costs.

Available categories: Software, Equipment, Travel, Office, Marketing, Professional Services, Insurance, Meals, Subscriptions, and Other.

Scenarios#

Scenarios let you create and save named financial snapshots — hypothetical states you can compare against each other and against your live numbers.

Each scenario stores a cash amount, burn rate, and income sources. You can compare up to 3 scenarios side-by-side, or save your current state as a snapshot to come back to later.

Typical use cases:

• What if I took a month off with no income?
• What if I hired a contractor and expenses jumped $3,000/month?
• What does my runway look like if I land a $4,000/month retainer?
• Best case vs. worst case comparison before a risky decision

Reports#

The Reports page gives you a historical view of your business financials:

• Monthly Revenue — bar chart of the last 6 months
• Revenue by Client — top 10 clients by revenue
• Expense Breakdown — spending by category
• Client Health Overview — distribution of A–F health grades
• At-Risk Clients — clients with D or F health scores

Reports are read-only and generated from your invoice and expense data. The more invoices you create in Runway, the more accurate and useful the reports become over time.

Profile & Business#

Set your name and business information. Business details (name, address, phone) appear on every invoice you create — set these up before sending your first invoice to clients.

Currency

Choose your display currency from 40+ supported currencies. This affects all money displayed throughout the app. All your data is stored as raw numbers — changing the currency updates the display only.

Tax Configuration

Set your estimated effective tax rate and whether you pay quarterly or annually. This powers the Tax Set Aside widget on the dashboard.

Alert Thresholds

Configure when the Alerts Banner appears on the dashboard. Set a warning threshold (e.g., 6 months) and a critical threshold (e.g., 3 months). You can also disable alerts entirely if you prefer a quieter dashboard.

Data & Export

Export all your Runway data as a JSON file at any time. This includes your financial settings, invoices, clients, expenses, pipeline, and scenarios.

You can also permanently delete your account from this section. Deletion requires typing “DELETE” to confirm and removes all your data from our servers immediately and permanently.