How to use Goals

What Are Goals?

Goals are specific business objectives that make it easy to track your progress and evaluate your performance. When combined with forecasting, they can be an effective tool for motivating your team.

Every Goal is made up of three components:

• Goal: This is what you want to monitor. Goals can be set up to monitor Sales Revenue or Orders.
• Metric: This is how you'll measure success within the Goal you've selected. Metrics can be set to either Total Increase or Percent Increase.
• Period: This is how often you want to achieve your Goal. The period can be set to Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly.

How To Set Up a Goal

To set up a Goal, follow these steps:

1. Select "Goals" from the left menu bar.
2. Click "Create Goal".
3. In the modal window that appears, give your Goal a name and description.
4. Choose what Goal you want to monitor (Total sales or Orders).
5. Select a Metric (Total or Percent growth).
6. Set the Period (Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly).
7. Optionally, you can select a specific customer segment from the "Customer Segment" dropdown menu (default is "All Customers").
8. Optionally, check the "Display on Overview Dashboard" checkbox to display the Goal on the overview dashboard.

How To Monitor and Manage Your Goal

You can monitor and manage your Goals by tracking your progress using the green progress bar. The solid line shows realized sales, while the dotted line shows future predicted sales. You can edit or delete a Goal by clicking the pen or trash icons in the top right corner of the Goal card.

Goal Progress

Goals are always in one of three states:

1. Failure forecast.
   
   Failure forecast means that you aren't expected to achieve your Goal based on your forecast Sales Revenue or Orders. In this state, your Goal displays the "😕" emoji:
   
2. Success forecast.
   
   Success forecast means that you are expected to achieve your Goal based on your forecast Sales Revenue or Orders. In this state, your Goal displays the "🚀" emoji:
   
3. Success.
   
   Success means that you've achieved your Goal! In this state, your Goal displays the "🎉" emoji:

Reminder: If you want to view your Goals on the Overview page, remember to select the "Display on Overview Dashboard" checkbox on the Goal's edit page:

Update: We've added new "Compare to" options: "Previous Year" and "Previous Period":

These options are only available for the Percent Growth metric, enabling you to project your growth based on:

• Previous Period: The last Week, Month, Quarter, or Year.
• Previous Year: The corresponding period in the previous year. For example, if you select "Quarter," your goal for the current quarter will compare to the same quarter from the previous year (instead of just the last quarter).

By choosing these options, you can better align your growth projections with relevant historical data for more accurate and meaningful comparisons.