Metrics and goals
The numbers your business steers by: each metric is a named sum of a ledger, so every number opens to the records behind it.
A metric is a number your business steers by, such as pipeline, revenue, or win rate. Each one is a named sum of a ledger, the way a bank balance sums its transactions. So any number opens to the records that make it up.
Example: what is in the pipeline
Open Metrics on the rail. Pipeline reads $1.2M this week.
- Open Pipeline. Its chart shows how the pipeline grew over the last eight weeks.
- Under By Customer, choose Stage instead. The pipeline splits into deals with a proposal out and qualified deals.
- Under Records, each deal is listed with its amount, largest first. Open one to see the deal itself.
The number, the split, and the deals all come from the same entries, so they always agree.
How a metric is made
A metric reads one ledger in one of three ways:
| Kind | What it reads | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Flow | What moved in a period: the entries dated in it | Bookings, deals won, tasks done |
| Balance | Where it stands at a moment: every entry so far | Pipeline, open tasks, cash |
| Ratio | One sum divided by another, for the same period | Win rate, cycle time |
A ratio is always worked out from its parts. A quarter's win rate is the quarter's deals won over the quarter's deals closed, never an average of weekly win rates.
Most metrics read a statistical ledger, which every record type with a status keeps: Pipeline reads the deal ledger, and Open tasks the task ledger. Money metrics such as Revenue read the general ledger. Each metric also says which direction is good, so a rise in Expenses shows as bad news.
The metrics your apps include
| App | Metrics |
|---|---|
| Sales | Pipeline, bookings, deals won, win rate |
| Finance | Revenue, expenses |
| Projects | Open tasks, tasks done, cycle time, age of open tasks |
Installing an app adds its metrics. A new metric reads its ledger's whole history at once, so it has numbers from the first day.
Read your metrics
Metrics lists every metric by app, by Weeks or Months, with the change from the previous week or month. A change in the good direction is green, and in the bad direction red.
Open a metric for its chart, its value split by any detail of its records, and the records it is made of.
KPIs shows a card for each metric over Day, Week, Month, Quarter, or Year to date, against the same point in the period before.
Open a card for its chart and its value by period. Open a period to see the records behind it.
Money in one currency
Your organization reports in one currency, set beside its time zone. Money in other currencies, such as a deal priced in euros, converts at your organization's exchange rate on or before the end of each period. When there is no rate that early, Continual uses the earliest rate after it.
Converting when a number is read means that saving a record never waits for an exchange rate. When you add a rate later, past numbers use it too. Your books still keep each entry in the book's own currency, converted on its date.
Who sees which numbers
A number counts only what you can see. If a project is private to its members, its tasks count in Open tasks for them and not for others.
Goals
Coming. A goal turns a metric into something the business pursues. It adds:
- A target, such as $500K in bookings this quarter.
- A warning band, so a goal reads as on track, close, or off track.
- An owner, the one person accountable for it.
- The goal it drives, so goals form a tree under the business's top goal, and each link shows how strongly one moves the other.
Goals tell Continual what to work toward when nobody asks, and how to judge its own work. Targets, budgets, and forecasts are kept in the same ledgers as the actual numbers, so comparing them is one read.
Coming, too: defining your own metrics in the app. Today you can define them through the API.