Progress that survives goals going down
KPI tracking usually fails on the metrics that should go down, so that’s where this sheet starts.
Half of a KPI list is things that should shrink — days to close, support hours, DSO — and
most trackers break on them. Here progress is (current − start) ÷ (target − start): for a
goal that goes down both differences are negative, the sign cancels, and a sales cycle cut
from 41 to 36 days on the way to 30 reads 45%, not −45%. MIN and MAX hold it between 0
and 100%.
Expected progress is the calendar’s opinion — how much of the time between the start date
and the due date has passed. Status compares the two with a ten-point tolerance: On track,
Behind, and above them Done and Overdue, in that order, so a finished goal never reads as
overdue.
Pro: the monthly check-in
Check-ins is a goal-by-month grid: type the value at the end of each month and Goals takes
the latest as the current value. The “latest” is found by taking the biggest month date among
the filled cells and looking it up again — gaps are fine, and it avoids the
LOOKUP(2, 1/…) idiom that behaves differently between apps. Months that ended without a
number are tinted, which is the nudge the sheet exists for. Areas adds the by-area and
by-owner view with average progress bars.
Checked, not just built
The build recalculates both workbooks in LibreOffice and in a second, independent engine and
compares sixty-eight values — every goal’s progress, expected and status, the summary
counts, the latest check-in and change per goal, and the by-area and by-owner tables —
against numbers computed outside Excel.