Track business goals with milestones and your own data

Most quarterly goals are set in a planning meeting, written into a slide and not looked at again until the next planning meeting. By then it is clear which ones were missed, and too late to do anything about it. Tracking a goal means putting it next to the number that measures it and looking at both on a fixed rhythm. This tutorial shows how to do that in clariBI, including what is automatic and what you still record by hand.

Step 1: write goals you can measure

A measurable goal has four parts:

• Metric: the number you track (MRR, new customers, churn rate, orders per week).
• Starting value: where you are today.
• Target: where you want to be.
• Deadline: when.

"Improve sales" is a wish. "Increase MRR from 80,000 to 100,000 by 31 December" is a goal.

Keep the number small: three to five goals for the company, two or three per team. Twenty active goals is a list of hopes.

Step 2: create the goals in clariBI

Goals are available on every plan, Free included.

1. Click Goals in the sidebar, then New Goal.
2. Enter a specific title and a description of how it is measured.
3. Pick the Goal Category: Epic (a strategic initiative), Topic (an operational goal under an epic) or Task (an action item under a topic).
4. Pick the Goal Type: Increase, Decrease, Maintain, Achieve Target or Complete Tasks.
5. Set the target value and unit, the priority and the target date, and create it as Draft or Active.

The business goals guide explains each field.

A useful structure: one epic per company goal ("Grow recurring revenue"), topics for the levers ("New customers from paid search", "Reduce involuntary churn"), and tasks for the work ("Launch the card-update email"). A parent's progress combines its own progress with the average of its children, so the epic moves as the pieces move.

If you run OKRs

clariBI has no OKR module: no key-result scoring and no check-in ritual. You can model an objective as an epic and each key result as a topic with a numeric target. That covers most of what small teams use OKRs for.

Step 3: know how progress is calculated

Progress is the current value divided by the target, capped at 100%. That has two consequences worth knowing before you set targets:

• Increase goals start above zero. An MRR goal from 80,000 to 100,000 starts at 80% progress. Read it as "80% of the target reached", not "80% of the way from start to finish". If you want the bar to show the gap, set the goal on the increase itself: "Add 20,000 of MRR", starting at 0.
• Decrease goals need a translation. For a churn goal from 4% to 2.5%, record progress as the share of the planned reduction achieved. At 3.25% churn you have made half the planned reduction, so record 50%.

Step 4: connect the goal to a dashboard number

Typing numbers from memory invites optimism. Connect the goal to the widget that measures it instead:

1. Open the dashboard with the metric, for example the MRR card on your revenue dashboard.
2. Click Link to Goal on the widget.
3. Pick an existing goal or create a new one from the widget.
4. Choose the value the goal should follow and, if needed, a conversion: monthly to annual (x 12), thousands, a ratio to a percentage, or a custom formula.

The goal takes its current value from the widget when you link it. Be clear about what happens next: the goal does not yet update itself when the dashboard refreshes. You record later progress with Update Progress, reading the number from the dashboard. The help center's connecting goals to dashboard data and the linking goals docs describe the current behavior. In practice this means the dashboard is live and the goal is updated on your review rhythm, which is usually weekly anyway.

Keep the dashboard itself fresh: pick a daily refresh for the dashboards your goals depend on, and check in Settings > Integrations that their sources are syncing.

Step 5: record progress and milestones

Click Update Progress on the goal, set the new progress and add a short note ("Closed 12 new accounts this week"). Every update is saved with its date and author, so the goal builds up a history and a progress chart.

To mark a checkpoint, switch the toggle to Milestone, name it ("Reached 90,000 MRR") and save. Milestones appear in the goal's list as achieved and in its history. See milestones and progress tracking.

clariBI records milestones when you reach them; it does not schedule future checkpoints or remind you before them. To plan checkpoints, write them into the goal's description or create tasks with their own target dates:

• 87,000 MRR by 31 October
• 94,000 MRR by 30 November
• 100,000 MRR by 31 December

If you miss the first checkpoint, you know early that the plan needs to change.

Step 6: read the warning signs

The Goals page shows totals for goals in progress, achieved and at risk. A goal counts as at risk when its target date is within 7 days and it is below 80%. That is a late signal, so do your own pace check each week: compare progress with time elapsed. A goal that is 30% done when 60% of its time has passed needs a conversation now.

On Starter and above you can also forecast a goal. Forecast value or Forecast progress % on the goal projects where it is heading, with 50, 80 and 95% ranges, based on the history you have recorded. The more regular your updates, the more useful the forecast.

Step 7: review goals every week

Add a short goal check to the weekly meeting. The weekly business review guide shows where it fits.

1. Open the dashboards the goals are linked to and record this week's values with Update Progress.
2. For each goal: on pace, slightly behind, or off track?
3. For anything off track: what is the cause, and what changes this week? Assign one owner.
4. Note any milestones reached.

Once a month, go deeper: what moved each goal, what blocked it, and whether any target should change because the situation changed. Adjusting a target openly is more useful than chasing an impossible one in silence.

Mistakes to avoid

• Goals without an owner. "The team" owns nothing. One person reports on each goal.
• Waiting to discuss a goal that is behind. The point of tracking is to act in month one, not in month three.
• Goals without actions. Under each goal, list the tasks that should move it, and check whether they are happening before the number moves.
• Leaving finished goals open. Mark them Completed so the counts on the Goals page stay meaningful.

On Professional and Enterprise you can add goals to a team workspace, where members can see and comment on them. The goals feature page summarizes what goals can do on each plan.

A good first step: pick your single most important number for the quarter, find the widget that shows it, click Link to Goal, and write two dated checkpoints into the description. Then put fifteen minutes in the calendar every Monday to update it.