Time settings

Every model has Time Settings, which let you define the date range (where your model starts and ends), and the granularity of your model (i.e. daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly). Monthly granularity is almost always what you want. You can find these in the top right of each model.

Last Actual Date

Last Actual Date determines when data is pulled up until, and what is displayed as an “actual” (read the full page here), and you can also use the Last Actual Date helper variable in formulas.

Limit visible date range

You can also choose to limit the date range shown in the spreadsheet, and in any charts/tables.

This does not change the model time settings or underlying calculations, it simply hides any time steps outside of the "visible date range".

Access this setting by hitting the same Time Settings modal in the top-left of the spreadsheet, in the "Advanced'' section.

Highlight today in spreadsheet view

If you'd like to highlight the current time step as "today" in the spreadsheet workspace, you can toggle this setting from the Time Settings modal in the top-left of the spreadsheet, in the "Advanced'' section.

Fiscal / financial years

You can define your fiscal/financial year in Causal in the same Time Settings modal in the top-left of the spreadsheet. Your fiscal year settings will affect the column headers in the spreadsheet, as well as any quarterly and yearly roll-up columns).

For example, if your fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31, then you would set your start month to be April. There is also the option to have your fiscal/financial year label be based on the end of year or start of year. By default it is based on end of year, i.e. the fiscal year from April 1 2021 to March 31 2022 would be labelled "FY22".