Your first canvas

Fluidly is a business canvas: a space where you build forecasts, explore scenarios, slice and dice transactions, monitor cash flow and trigger alerts — and watch your business beat.

You build on it by placing components and wiring them together. Each component does one job, and works out as much as it can from the data you connect. You say what you are after; the data decides the rest.

Canvases

Each tab along the top is a separate canvas. Make as many as you like — one for the group's cash position, one for the budget, one for a scenario you are not ready to share — and switch between them at any time.

To start a new canvas, press + and pick a template, or begin from a blank canvas. Templates are ready-made flows you can take apart and change. See Templates.

Adding components

The palette along the bottom of the screen holds every component, grouped the way a flow reads: Data sources, Filters, Calculate, Miscellaneous, Triggers and Actions. Open a group and drag a component onto the canvas.

Each group also has a number key — press and hold 1 to 6 and the group opens where your mouse is. Only Data sources is shown at first; the others appear when you expand the palette.

You do not need the palette once you have something on the canvas: drag from any port and a menu of everything that fits that port opens around your cursor. See Components and wires.

A first flow: cash position, cash flow and forecast

Five steps, and you have a group cash position, the cash flow for any period you pick, and a forecast.

1. Two bank accounts. Place two Bank Account components (palette key 1) and pick an account on each. If the accounts are not in the list yet, connect the bank first — see Connecting a bank.
2. A Timeline. Wire both accounts into one Timeline. Fluidly puts an Add between them for you, so the Timeline shows the two accounts as one balance.
3. A Number. Drag from the Timeline's output and add a Number. It shows the cash position.
4. Pick a period. Double-click the Timeline and brush a stretch of time. The Number changes with it: it now shows the cash flow for the period you picked — what came in less what went out. Clear the selection and it is the cash position again.
5. A Forecast. Take a Forecast from the palette (key 3, Calculate) and, holding Alt, drop it on the wire between the Add and the Timeline. It slots into the flow, and the Timeline now shows the balance carried forward, with a fan of what might happen.

The order in step 5 matters. With the Forecast before the Timeline, the Timeline only chooses what you look at; brushing a period never changes what the Forecast learns from.

Moving around

• Scroll to pan the canvas.
• Right-click to jump straight to a distant spot — this is bunny mode.
• Hold Alt and drag across wires to cut them.
• Hold Alt while dragging one component onto another to combine them into a compound with a common output.

Foreground and background

The canvas has two layers. You work in the foreground (key a). Components placed in the background (key z) are locked — useful for headers, logos, country outlines and large background charts that should not move while you work.