When running a business, some activities naturally affect others. For example, if your sales go up, your marketing expenses or inventory purchases might also increase.
These cause-and-effect relationships are what we call drivers and correlations.
RunSmart makes it easy to identify these relationships directly in your P&L Statement and Balance Sheet.
What Are Drivers?
A driver is something in your business that "drives" or influences another part of your financials.
Think of it like this:
Sales go up → you spend more on shipping and packaging.
More customers → you hire more staff to handle the workload.
New product launches → higher marketing and advertising costs.
Drivers are the starting point — they set other things in motion.
What Are Correlations?
A correlation means there’s a noticeable pattern between two financial line items.
In your financials, it means when a driver changes, a related line item tends to change with it too.
For example:
Every time your sales increase by 10%, you notice your marketing costs also go up by about the same percentage.
If a pattern like that shows up consistently in your historical data, we say the two are correlated.
In RunSmart:
Green cell and “Yes” = This line item is correlated with its driver. They move together.
Red cell and “No” = No strong pattern found. They move independently.
This makes it easy to understand your business relationships without having to dig into complex math.
Why Drivers and Correlations Matter
Understanding drivers and correlations can make your financial planning smarter.
You’ll know which areas grow together — for example, if sales drive marketing costs, RunSmart can forecast both more accurately.
You’ll spot which expenses are fixed — if some costs don’t really change with growth, you can plan for them more confidently.
You'll make better decisions about where to invest your time and money.
RunSmart uses these relationships behind the scenes to make your forecasts more accurate.
How to View Drivers and Correlations
By default, the "Driver" and "Correlated?" columns are hidden to keep the view clean. Here’s how you can see them:
Go to your P&L Statement or Balance Sheet page.
Find the Show Correlations toggle at the top right.
Turn the toggle on:
If the toggle is gray, the extra columns are hidden.
If the toggle is blue, the "Driver" and "Correlated?" columns are visible.
When you turn them on, the label will automatically change to Hide Correlations, so you can hide them again anytime.
Additional Notes
We purposely hide complex statistics like "r-squared" values behind correlations, because those numbers can be confusing unless you have a deep background in statistics.
Instead, we show you the simple and practical part: Is there a relationship or not?
Our goal is to give you powerful insights in plain language so you can make smarter decisions, faster.