Tracking an active goal: progress, adjust, retire

What a live goal card is

Once you have accepted a goal, either the one IQ proposed or one you picked yourself from the catalog, it becomes a live goal card in the Goals tab. This is where you watch it move: where you started, where you are now, where operators like you sit, and the target you set. It is also where you change your mind, raise or lower the target, or retire the goal altogether.

A goal is aspirational, not a deficiency report. IQ proposes a starting target from your own history or a peer or research reference; you decide what to chase, and you can change it at any time. Verinode never decides the number for you.

Where to find it

Open Impact from the sidebar, route /impact. The first tile row on the page is Goals. Click any tile in that row, a live goal tile, the IQ suggests proposal tile, or the Set a Goal tile, and a slider opens on top of the page with the Goals tab active (the URL carries ?tab=goals).

Inside the Goals tab, live goals sit under the Your Goals heading, one card per goal, stacked top to bottom. Below them, Your Next Goal shows the single proposal IQ has identified next, and Browse All Goals lists the full catalog grouped as Profit, Cash, Cost, Job Speed, Team, Hiring, Growth, and Safety, where you can set a goal directly on any metric your data supports today.

The four rows on a live goal card

Every card leads with the goal's name (for example, "Net Profit Margin" or a material's name like "OSB, 7/16 in.") and a status pill in the top right. Under that, up to four rows, each a label on the left and a number on the right:

• Where you started, your baseline value at the moment you accepted the goal. This only appears when a real baseline exists, either your own reported number or a number IQ derived from your data at set time.
• Where you are now, your latest measured value. This only appears once IQ has a value it derived from your actual data. A self-reported starting point does not count as tracking, so this row stays absent until a real, derived read has landed, which is exactly what "waiting on your numbers" means below.
• Operators like you, the peer or research figure the goal was set against, when one exists. This is never shown if no comparison is available or if your account has not unlocked peer comparisons yet, Verinode never shows a number it cannot back.
• Your goal, the target itself, always shown, in copper and larger type than the other rows so it reads as the number you are chasing.

Every number is formatted for its metric: percentages carry a %, day counts read "N days", dollar goals compact to figures like "$325K" (small unit-price goals, like a material's cost per unit, show cents instead, since rounding to the nearest dollar would erase the number that matters), ratios read "N.Nx", and score-based metrics show one decimal place.

The status pill

The pill in the top right of the card reads one of four labels:

• On track, green. The goal is live and tracking normally.
• Needs attention, amber. IQ has flagged that progress has stalled or reversed against the target.
• Waiting on your numbers, gray, no color accent. The goal is accepted, but IQ does not yet have a real derived reading of your current value, so there is nothing to measure progress against yet.
• Achieved, green. Your latest measured value has reached (or passed, in the right direction) the target, and the reading was taken after the goal was set. This label is deliberately never awarded the instant you set a goal at your current value; only a genuine later measurement can earn it.

An achieved goal does not disappear from Your Goals. It stays there as a kept record, full rows, green pill, no Adjust or Retire controls (there is nothing left to adjust on a goal you already hit). The same goal also appears in the collapsed History section at the bottom of the tab.

The progress bar

Under the four rows, when Verinode has both a baseline and a current derived value, a horizontal bar fills from left to right, and a line under it reads "N% of the way there." The percentage measures how far your current value has moved from your baseline toward your target, direction-aware, so it reads correctly whether the metric is one you want to raise (like net margin) or lower (like days to pay). It is clamped between 0% and 100%: a value that has not moved yet reads 0%, and one that has already passed the target reads 100% rather than an number over the top.

The bar is absent entirely on a goal that is waiting on data, since there is no current value yet to measure a percentage from.

Adjust target

Click Adjust target on any goal that is not yet achieved and the row rows give way to a stepper: a minus button, the current target value, and a plus button, followed by Save target and Cancel.

1. 1Click Adjust target under the goal's rows.
2. 2Use the − and + buttons to move the target down or up. Each tap moves by a step sized to the metric (for example, 3 percentage points on a percent goal, 7 days on a days goal, or a proportional step on a dollar goal), then rounds to a sensible granularity so the number never looks arbitrary.
3. 3Click Save target to store the new number, or Cancel to discard the change and close the stepper without saving.

Two guardrails keep the stepper honest:

• It stays inside a credible band. Every metric has a plausibility floor and ceiling (for example, net margin cannot be adjusted below 5% or above 45%), so you cannot drag a target into fantasy territory.
• It cannot land on a target you have already met. If your goal is live and IQ already has a current reading, the stepper will not let you set a target your current value already satisfies, raising a higher-is-better target below where you already stand, or lowering a lower-is-better target above it. Verinode blocks this because it would otherwise fire a hollow "goal achieved" celebration the moment you saved it. If you try anyway, the save is rejected and the stepper simply stays open so you can pick a different number, nothing is lost.

Adjusting a target does not touch your baseline or your progress history: only the target moves, and the goal keeps tracking against it from where you already are.

Retire this goal

Next to Adjust target, Retire this goal removes a goal from active tracking without deleting its record. Click it and, after a short "Retiring…" state, the goal drops out of Your Goals and reappears later in the collapsed History section, alongside your achieved goals, so you can always see what you chose to stop chasing and what it was.

Retiring a goal frees up its metric: it goes back to "Set goal" in Browse All Goals, so you can start fresh on the same metric later with a new baseline and a new target, if you change your mind.

There is no confirmation dialog. If you retire a goal by mistake, set the same metric again from Browse All Goals; it will not resume the old goal's history, it starts a new one.

Waiting on your numbers: the one-tap Connect handoff

A goal can be waiting on data for one of two reasons: you set it from the catalog on a metric Verinode cannot yet measure from your connected data, or you accepted a proposal before the relevant data had flowed in. Either way, the card is honest about it rather than pretending to track something it cannot.

When a goal is waiting, two things appear under the rows in place of the progress bar:

• A plain-language line explaining what is missing, for example "Connect your accounting once and I'll track this and find what's moving it," "Connect your job data once and I'll track this automatically," or, for metrics that live outside your day-to-day systems, "This starts tracking once your team data flows in." Materials goals read "This tracks as your supplier invoices with unit prices flow in."
• Directly under it, a one-tap link, in copper, phrased as a service Verinode will do for you rather than a chore you owe it, for example "Connect your accounting once →" or "Connect your inbox or job files once →". Clicking it takes you straight to /connect with the right data focus preselected (accounting, jobs, vendors, or team, depending on what the goal needs), so you land on the exact step that unlocks this specific goal rather than a generic setup page.

Once real data flows in and IQ derives an actual reading for the metric, the card updates on its own: the status pill moves off "Waiting on your numbers," the "Where you are now" row appears, and the progress bar starts filling from your baseline toward your target.

What you will not see

• A raw metric key or database token. Every label on a goal card is the same plain-noun name shown on Benchmarks, never a snake_case field name.
• A peer number Verinode cannot back. If your account has not unlocked peer comparisons, the "Operators like you" row is simply absent rather than showing a blurred or estimated figure.
• An instant celebration. A goal set at your current value does not fire "Achieved" the moment you accept it; only a later, genuinely measured reading can earn that pill, and the same rule blocks an Adjust that would create one.
• Verinode telling you what your target should be. IQ recommends a starting point; every number on the card, including the target, is yours to set and change.

Related reading

• The Impact section: your ROI on IQ for the Goals tile row, the wider slider, and how goals fit alongside Decisions, Dollars, and Engagement.
• Understanding your margin if your first goal is net margin, the metric behind "what you keep."
• Connecting your data for what each Connect focus (accounting, jobs, vendors, team) actually asks for and unlocks.
• How benchmarks work and Reading a benchmark for how the peer and research numbers behind a goal's target are built.