Forecast

From manual planning to a living view of cash flow

Period:
2025–2026
Platforms:
Web, iOS, Android
Role:
research, product design, design mentorship, specs, qa

Key question

How can we help a SME owner understand his next 90 days?

How might we help a SME owner understand the next 90 days quickly and confidently, without requiring them to build and maintain a finance model?

Context

SME owners needed to know whether they would have enough cash for their next decision. Their bank balance showed today; spreadsheets required constant maintenance; specialist forecasting tools were often too expensive.

Over 18 months, we evolved Forecast from a manually maintained table into a clearer, increasingly automatic view of financial reality and intent.

Understand

See where the business is heading

A balance can be accurate and still be misleading: it says nothing about invoices arriving next week, upcoming bills, or a hiring decision planned for next month.

Forecast turns these signals into a readable financial position through:

  • a larger, primary chart;
  • a running cash-balance line;
  • clear past, current, and future periods;
  • synchronised chart and table selection;
  • condensed secondary information.
The primary Forecast chart, with the running cash-balance line
The Forecast chart on mobile
The forecast table, its selection synchronised with the chart

Distinguish

Separate what happened, what is expected, and what the business intends.

The hardest problem was not visualising more data. It was preventing fundamentally different types of information from appearing equally certain.

Forecast follows confirmed reality when it exceeds the target, while preserving the target when ambition is greater than known activity.

Actual, expected and target amounts distinguished in one chart
Inflows broken down by category
Product sales against their monthly target

Act

Move from a gap to its cause

A financial overview is useful only if customers can investigate and respond:

1. Scan the chart.

2. Select a month or table cell.

3. Open the contextual side panel.

4. Review Actual, Expected, or Overdue items.

5. Edit an assumption, inspect a commitment, or correct a match.

6. See the projection update in context.

A month selected in the chart
The contextual side panel open on that month
Expected transactions listed with their due dates
An overdue item being reconciled

Stay in control

Automate without taking over

The experience balances automation and control through:

  • automatic expected transactions;
  • historical suggestions and autofill;
  • recurring target values;
  • editable monthly assumptions;
  • scenarios and comparisons;
  • settings that persist across devices;
  • clear fallback states when data or permissions are unavailable.

Qonto builds the first picture; the customer remains the decision-maker.

Monthly assumptions being edited in place
Setting a recurring target
Historical suggestions offered while adding a transaction

Adoption growth

+225%

Monthly active organisations went from 7,109 (Sep 25) to 23,112 (Jul 26)

Discovery to usage

x3

Went from 19,3% (Sep 25) to 55,5% (Jul 26)

Retention month over month

~34%

Of active organizations return the following month

How to push further

Shift Forecast from raw-data to decision-ready insights

Shift Forecast from a manual, raw-data planning tool customers must interpret themselves into a system that delivers trustworthy, decision-ready insights — surfaced at the right moment — so customers can act (chase a client, pay an invoice, set a target) without digging into the numbers