The time tracker records what you did. A time tracker goal states what you meant to do: thirty hours a week, ten hours a month on Acme, forty hours before the launch. Ceum then measures the first against the second and tells you where you stand.
Goals live at Time tracker goals, reachable from the Time tracker page.
Creating a goal
A goal needs a name and a target in hours. Everything else narrows it:
- Repeats — Weekly, Monthly, or One time. A repeating goal restarts with its full target at the start of each period; a one-time goal runs between the dates you give it.
- Ends — a repeating goal runs forever unless you give it a Last day. It then keeps going through the last whole period that finishes by that day and suspends itself, so a monthly goal told to stop mid-month closes the previous month and no more — a part-month measured against a full month's target would report a miss you never had. Its history stays; move the date and resume it to run it again.
- Add what it counts — all tracked time by default, or narrowed by anything you stack up. See What a goal counts below.
- Remind me as the deadline nears — see Reminders below.
- Include in my report email — see Reporting below.
Weeks run Monday to Sunday and months are calendar months, both in your timezone rather than the server's. If you change your timezone in settings, future periods follow it.
What a goal counts
A goal counts every tracked hour by default. To narrow it, add one or more criteria. Each names one thing:
| Criterion | Matches |
|---|---|
| Client | entries reaching that client through whatever chain of task and project links connects them |
| Project | entries linked to a task of that project |
| Task | entries on that task, and on its subtasks — a container task holds no time of its own |
| Tag | entries carrying that tag. The entry's own tags, not its task's |
| Text | entries whose description contains what you typed, upper or lower case |
Stack as many as you like, of any mix of kinds. The chips under the picker are the set, and you edit it later the same way you built it — add another, or click the × on one.
Any, or all
With two or more criteria you also choose how they combine:
- Any (the default) counts an entry that matches at least one of them. "Acme, or anything tagged billable" is this.
- All counts only an entry that matches every one of them. "Work on the redesign that is also tagged billable" is this.
With no criteria, or with only one, the two settings select exactly the same entries — so the choice is only offered from the second criterion on.
An entry counts once, however many criteria it satisfies. An hour on the redesign, tagged billable, described "design review" contributes one hour to a goal naming all three — not three.
Reading the list
Each row carries a progress bar and the figures behind it — hours logged, hours targeted, and the percentage. The percentage is not capped: a goal at 140% says so, because over-achievement is a real thing to know.
The bar turns amber only when the period is nearly over and the target is still unmet. A bar that went amber merely for being under target would be amber all week, every week, and would stop meaning anything. A goal with its reminder switched off never goes amber at all — the same check decides the bar, the bell, and the email, so a goal you asked not to be nudged about stays quiet everywhere.
Expanding a row shows the current period's dates, the full set of criteria, and the goal's settings. In the table the criteria sit in the Contributing column. A row shows two of them and then counts the rest in words — "3 more" — rather than hiding them behind a control, because a table row has one line's height to work with.
Suspending a goal
A goal you are not chasing right now can be suspended. It greys out, sorts to the bottom of the list, and stops alerting and reminding — but it is not deleted, and its history is untouched. Resume it whenever you like.
Suspending does not stop its periods from closing. A suspended weekly goal still gets a row in the history each week, showing what you happened to log. Suspension pauses attention, not record-keeping.
On the timer page
The Time tracker page's right-hand card switches between Totals and Goals. The Goals view shows your active goals with their bars, so you can see the effect of the session you are running without leaving the page.
Reminders
Switch on Remind me as the deadline nears and Ceum will email you once per period when the period is nearly spent and the target is not met yet.
"Nearly spent" defaults to the last fifth of the period — about a day and a half of a week, about six days of a month. A fraction rather than a fixed number of days, because two days is most of the end of a week and barely the end of a month. If you would rather set a fixed lead, give the goal a number of days and it will use that instead.
You get at most one reminder per goal per period, and goals due a reminder on the same day arrive as one email rather than several.
Reminders also appear in the bell and on the Alerts page while the deadline is close. They are always a warning, never urgent — see below.
A missed goal is not a failure
Nothing in Ceum marks a missed goal red, and that is deliberate. When a period ends, the goal starts again with its full target restored. A red badge would either sit on a row that is, at that moment, perfectly fine, or it would be painted onto a period you can no longer do anything about.
Where a shortfall does show up is the history — as a fact about a period that has closed, not an alarm about one you are still in.
History
Goal history is the record of every period that has closed: which goal, which period, hours logged against the target in force at the time, and whether it was met.
Two things about it are worth knowing:
- The numbers are frozen, not recalculated. Editing a goal's target today does not change whether last month was met.
- The record is not a cache. Once the time entries behind a closed period are gone, that period cannot be recomputed from anything — the snapshot is the only copy. Both plans that include time goals keep time entries for as long as your account exists, so this is not a hazard while you stay on them; it becomes one if you drop to the free plan, which keeps time entries for 365 days. See Items approaching deletion.
Reporting
Turn on Include in my report email for a goal and its closed periods appear in your Ceum report email, one line per period with the hours and the outcome.
There is no separate weekly-or-monthly setting for the report, because a goal already has a rhythm: a weekly goal reports weekly, a monthly one monthly, and an account with both hears from each as it closes.
Closed goal periods also appear on the time tracker reports page, under the period you have navigated to. Reporting is part of the Reports feature on your plan.
To stop the report email entirely, switch off Report emails under notification settings. Reminder emails are a separate category there, so you can keep one and drop the other.
On mobile
The mobile app shows your goals with their progress and what each one counts — labelled Counts there rather than Add what it counts — and lets you suspend or resume one — the decisions you make while looking at the number. Creating and editing goals is done on the web, since a goal is set up once and then watched.
Goal reminders appear in the mobile alerts screen alongside everything else.
How much of an entry counts
Which entries are eligible is the goal's criteria, above. How much of an eligible entry falls inside the period is a separate question.
An entry that overlaps the goal's period contributes the part of it that falls inside — an entry running from Sunday evening into Monday counts toward each week for the share that belongs to it. A timer that is still running counts too, and grows as you watch.
If a goal's criteria cover an unusually large amount of tracked time, Ceum may tell you it cannot measure it rather than making the whole page wait. The goal still appears; only its numbers are withheld.