Goals & alerts
In plain English
You tell the app what you're aiming for — say, "$400,000 in sales this quarter."
The app watches your daily sales, works out the pace you're going at, and tells you one of four things:
- Exceeded — you've already passed the target. Done.
- On track — carry on and you'll make it.
- At risk — you'll land close, but probably just short.
- Will miss — at this pace you won't get there.
It also gives you a percentage — like "18% chance of hitting this" — so you know how worried to be. And it does this from week one, not on the last day of the quarter when it's too late.
How to use it
- Go to Intelligence → Goals & Alerts in the left-hand menu.
- Click "New goal."
- Pick what you're measuring — sales, orders, new customers, average order value, or repeat rate.
- Type your target number and choose the time period (this month, this quarter, or your own dates).
- Save. The app starts tracking straight away.
- Turn on the weekly summary so the update comes to you by email or Slack.
⏱ ~2 min to set up · 💳 Pro+ · 🎯 Know you're going to miss while you can still fix it
Why this matters for your business
Most businesses find out they missed a target on the day it ends. Everyone knew the number. Everyone was watching sales come in. But "we're at $164,000 and we need $400,000" doesn't feel alarming in week six, because there's still half a quarter to go and it feels like there's time.
There usually isn't. If you're six weeks in and running at $27,000 a week, you will finish around $355,000 — and no amount of effort in the final fortnight closes a $45,000 gap. The information needed to know that was available in week six. Nobody did the arithmetic.
That's all this feature does: the arithmetic, every day, automatically. It takes your current pace, projects it forward, and tells you plainly whether you're going to make it. Six weeks of warning is enough time to pull a promotion forward, shift a budget, or reset expectations with your team. Six days is not.
What this typically unlocks
| What you get | Typical result |
|---|---|
| Warning that you'll miss a target | ~6 weeks early instead of on the last day |
| Time spent building weekly reports | Near zero — the summary writes itself |
| Arguments about "are we on track?" | Settled — there's a number |
| Targets set and then forgotten | Rare — the weekly email keeps them visible |
What you actually get
What you can set a goal for
| Goal type | What it measures | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | Total sales | The classic target |
| Orders | Number of orders | When you care about volume, not just value |
| New customers | First-time buyers | Growth and acquisition targets |
| Average order value | Average spend per order | Upsell and bundling work |
| Repeat rate | Share of orders from returning customers | Retention work |
Time periods
| Period | How it behaves |
|---|---|
| This month | Rolls over automatically each month |
| This quarter | Rolls over automatically each quarter |
| Custom dates | You pick the start and end |
The four status labels
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Exceeded | You've already passed the target | Celebrate, then consider raising it |
| On track | At current pace, you'll make it | Keep going |
| At risk | You'll land between 80% and 100% of target | Act now — a small push may close it |
| Will miss | You'll land below 80% of target | Change the plan or reset expectations |
Status is worked out by taking your pace so far and projecting it to the end of the period. It's the same calculation you'd do on the back of an envelope — just done every day, automatically.
The probability — and why it's different
Alongside the status, you get a percentage: the chance you'll actually hit the target.
This is not the same as the status, and the difference is where the value is. Status assumes your sales carry on at exactly the average pace. Real sales bounce around — some days are big, some are quiet. The probability takes that bounce into account.
An example that catches people out:
Goal $400,000 this quarter
So far $164,000 (41% of target)
Projection $355,000
Status At risk
Probability 18% chance of hitting it
Confidence High
"At risk" sounds like a coin flip. The probability says it's not — there's an 18% chance. Your sales aren't steady enough to close a $45,000 gap in six weeks. That's a much clearer signal to act on, and it's why the percentage is worth reading.
How sure the app is
Every forecast comes with a confidence label, based on how many days of data it has:
| Confidence | Based on | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| High | 30+ days | Trust it |
| Medium | 14–29 days | Reasonable, treat as a guide |
| Low | Under 14 days | Too early — check back in a week |
Very new goals will honestly say "not enough data yet" rather than give you a made-up number.
One thing to know: revenue and order goals get the best forecasts, because they can be measured cleanly day by day. Average order value and repeat rate are harder to break down daily, so their forecasts carry lower confidence. If you want a reliable forecast, a revenue or orders goal is the better choice.
The weekly summary
A single email (or Slack message) containing:
| Section | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Key numbers | Sales, orders, new customers, repeat customers — with last week's comparison |
| Your goals | One line each, with status |
| Top 3 things to do | From the Action Center |
| Top 3 opportunities | Money you're not currently capturing |
| Anything that broke | Recent serious alerts |
| Why sales moved | The headline reason, up or down |
You can switch any section off if you don't want it.
Why this matters more than it sounds. The same information is in the app all week. But a report that arrives is read, and a dashboard you have to remember to open usually isn't. Turning this on is the single highest-return two minutes in the whole hub.
How it works (without the technical bits)
Real merchant scenarios
Scenario A — Six weeks of warning
Setup. Homeware shop set a $400,000 quarterly sales target. Six weeks in, they'd done $164,000 — 41% of the way, which the team read as "roughly halfway through, roughly halfway there."
What the app showed:
Projection $355,000
Status At risk
Probability 18%
Confidence High (42 days of data)
Why they took it seriously. 41% of the way in half the time sounds fine. An 18% chance doesn't. The percentage cut through the comfortable reading.
What they did. Pulled a promotion planned for the following quarter forward into weeks 9 and 10.
Result. Finished at $391,000. Still short — but $36,000 better than they were heading for, and the shortfall was flagged to their board in week seven instead of being a surprise at quarter end.
Scenario B — A goal that quietly got easier
Setup. Skincare brand set a target of 1,200 new customers in a quarter. Week three showed "will miss" at 34% probability.
Week seven, after a new referral programme launched:
Status On track
Probability 81%
Why this mattered. They'd been about to add paid-acquisition budget to rescue the goal. The forecast showed the referral programme had already fixed it.
Saved. Roughly $22,000 of ad spend that wasn't needed.
Scenario C — Reading confidence properly
Setup. Merchant set an average-order-value goal and got:
Status Will miss
Probability —
Confidence Low (9 days of data)
Their instinct was to launch a bundling push immediately.
What the label was telling them. Nine days isn't enough to forecast from. Average order value also bounces a lot day to day — one big order moves it noticeably.
What they did instead. Waited two weeks. At 23 days, the forecast read "on track, 71%, medium confidence." The early reading had been noise.
The lesson. A low-confidence forecast is not a warning. It's the app telling you it doesn't know yet.
Scenario D — The summary that got read
Setup. Merchant with four staff. Nobody except the founder ever opened the analytics.
After turning on the weekly summary to a shared Slack channel:
| Before | After 8 weeks | |
|---|---|---|
| People who knew the current numbers | 1 | 5 |
| Average time to act on an opportunity | 12 days | 3 days |
| Weekly report prep time | ~90 min | 0 |
What changed. Nothing about the data — it had always been there. The difference was that it arrived somewhere people already looked, instead of waiting behind a login.
Best practices
✅ Set at least one goal. Everything on this page needs a target to work from.
✅ Prefer revenue or order goals if you want a trustworthy forecast — they measure cleanly day by day.
✅ Read the probability, not just the status. "At risk" at 45% and "at risk" at 12% call for very different responses.
✅ Ignore forecasts marked low confidence. Wait until you have two to three weeks of data.
✅ Send the weekly summary to a shared channel, not just to yourself. Shared numbers get acted on.
✅ Check goals weekly, not daily. Daily movement is mostly noise.
❌ Don't set a goal and forget it. An untracked target is just a wish — that's what the weekly summary is for.
❌ Don't panic in week one. Early forecasts are low confidence and the app will say so.
❌ Don't set five goals at once. One or two you actually watch beat five you ignore.
❌ Don't treat "at risk" as failure. It means "you can still fix this" — which is exactly when to act.
Plan tiers
| Capability | Free | Starter | Pro | Agency | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goal tracking with status | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Probability forecast | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Confidence labelling | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monthly / quarterly / custom periods | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Weekly summary by email | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Weekly summary to Slack | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Choose which sections appear | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-store goal roll-up | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
Frequently asked
How many goals can I have? Up to 50 active at once, though one or two you actually watch will serve you better than a dozen you don't.
What happens when a monthly or quarterly goal ends? Monthly and quarterly goals roll forward automatically into the next period. Custom-date goals simply end.
Why is there no probability on my goal? Either it's too new (under about two weeks), or it's a goal type that can't be measured cleanly day by day — average order value and repeat rate are the usual ones.
Can I change a target mid-period? Yes. Tracking continues against the new number from that point.
If I delete a goal, is it really gone? It's archived rather than erased, so the history stays intact.
Does the weekly summary cost anything extra? No, it's included on Pro and above.
Can different people get different summaries? The summary goes to your configured email addresses or Slack channel. Send it to a shared channel so everyone sees the same numbers.
What does "80% of target" actually mean for the At risk label? If you're projected to finish anywhere between 80% and 100% of your target, you're "at risk." Below 80% is "will miss." So a $400,000 goal projecting $340,000 (85%) is at risk; projecting $300,000 (75%) will miss.
See also
- Growth Intelligence overview — the hub and its sections
- Action Center — the top-3 actions in your weekly summary
- Revenue command center — the numbers behind your goals
- Customer intelligence — retention and repeat-rate context
- Anomaly detection — the alerts in your summary
- Weekly digest & engine audit — other scheduled reports