Reading Your Card

Reading Your Card — Status, Forecast, Gap & Time Left

Every card with a goal shows an Information Bar just below the goal line. Each cell tells you something different: whether you're on track, where you're heading, how far you are from the goal, and how much time is left.

The Information Bar can be shown in three styles, set per dashboard in Dashboard Preferences:

• Table (default) — a compact labeled grid with a color-coded accent at the bottom of each cell.
• Pill — a row of small rounded, color-coded tags.
• Bar — a single strip with a header showing the overall result.

All three show the same information. Which cells appear depends on the card: Forecast and Time Left only appear for calendar-period windows (see below), and a card with no goal has no Information Bar.

Status

Status shows where your metric stands right now relative to its goal, as a plain-language label — from best to worst: Exceeding, Goal Reached, Needs Attention, At Risk, Critical. See How dashboardSMASHBOARD Calculates Your Card's Signals for what each label means.

You may see a special state instead of a label:

• Achieved — the goal for the period was met and locked in.
• Early Window — too little of the period has passed to judge fairly. This is expected and clears on its own.
• Building History — a "grow by %" goal needs comparison data, and there isn't enough yet.
• Paused — data is temporarily unavailable.
• — — the card has no goal.

When Status changes between refreshes, the card shows a transition such as "↓ Slipping (was On Pace)" so you can see the direction of change.

Forecast

Forecast projects where you'll finish the period if your current pace holds, as a label — Will Exceed, On Pace, Slipping, Off Track, Will Miss — or Insufficient Data early in the period.

Forecast needs a calendar-period window such as This month. Rolling windows like Last 30 days never end, so Forecast shows "—".

Things to know:

• It's a straight-line projection: it assumes the rest of the period looks like the average day so far. Campaigns, seasonality, and weekday/weekend swings aren't modeled — a weekend-heavy site looks pessimistic on a Monday and optimistic on a Sunday.
• It's held back early in the period, for the same reason Status shows Early Window.
• For rate-style metrics such as Engagement Rate or Bounce Rate, the current value already is the best estimate of where you'll finish, so there's nothing to project.

Gap

Gap is the signed difference between where you are and the goal.

Time Left

Time Left counts down the calendar period, in abbreviated units: D days, W weeks, M months, Y years.

Comparison with the previous period

Cards also show the comparison-period value and the percentage change, colored green or red by whether the change is good for that metric. See Choosing the Right Visualization.

The Alert pulse

Some cards use the Alert display: the card border glows a color taken from Status — green for the healthy labels, amber for Needs Attention, red for At Risk or Critical. It's designed so a dashboard left open on a wall or second monitor works as an at-a-glance status board.

A Worked Example

Monthly sessions goal: grow 10% vs. last month (last month: 20,000 → goal 22,000) · Today: 18 March (13 days left) · Sessions so far: 9,400

Why Status and Forecast can disagree. Status is a snapshot — where am I right now? Forecast adds time — where will I end up if this pace continues? Early in a period Status almost always looks worse than Forecast; late in a period they converge. Watch Forecast early in the period and Status late.

Reading Status and Forecast together

Refresh timing

Card data is refreshed every 5 to 15 minutes depending on your plan, so Status and Forecast can lag Google Analytics by that much — and Google Analytics itself can take up to a day or two to finalize a day's numbers. See Installation & Setup.

Still need help? Open a support case