Month-to-Date Target
A guide on how to create a month-to-date (MTD) target and see your progress based on an increasing target value.
Last updated: Feb. 7, 2023
Table of contents
What is a month-to-date target?
MTD defines a period that starts on the first day of the current calendar month and ends on the current day (today). A month-to-date target increases every day along with the number of calendar working days and shows how much of the total target your team needs to achieve on a single day. MTD targets allow everyone to have a better understanding of the milestones and progress towards the total target.
An example of a month-to-date target from September 22, 2021.
Do more with conditional colors
Use conditional colors to visualize your progress. The widgets will change color based on the milestones you define.
Example: There are 22 work days in September 2021, and the target is to reach $ 100.000 in sales this month. It means that your team should reach $ 4,545 each day. With a month-to-date target formula, these would be the target values your team sees during the month:
- September 1st: $ 4,545
- September 2nd: $ 9,090
- September 3rd: $ 13,636
- September 30th: $ 100,000
Having the total target shown at the beginning of the month can seem vague and difficult to achieve. In contrast, if you create a formula that divides the monthly target by the number of working days, the team will only see the target value they need to reach on the given day.
Create a formula
MTD target formula takes the total target, divides it by the total number of work days in the current month, then multiplies the result by the number of work days so far. See the formula example below.
This formula requires that you set the time period on the widget to current month.
To create a month-to-date target, go to Formulas > + New formula. You will have to add three components to create the formula. See the video example below.
- The first component needs to be your target. Choose between Data function or Static number.
- If you have a data source that contains all your targets, use the Data function component and calculate the sum of the target values.
- Choose the Static number component if you want to add a fixed number as your target.
- Select the Date function as your second component. Choose Work days from Widget start date to Widget end date. This component will return the total working days in a given month.
- Add another Date function, but this time choose Work days from Widget start date to Today.
- Change the operators between the first and second components to ➗ and between the second and third to ✖️️.
- Click Save to finish.
You have now created a month-to-date target formula. With this formula, the target will increase each day, and at the end of the month, the number will reach the total target. When adding this formula to a widget, make sure to set the time period to the current month.
Create more formulas
Find out how to create a month-to-date index in this article.
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