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 behind the gear icon (⚙️) in the top right of each model.

Time filters

You can easily adjust the time period you're looking at across the spreadsheet and dashboard, by adjusting the Time Filter at the top-right.

This will filter the entire spreadsheet, and all the charts/tables in the dashboard for the filtered time period only.

Note: This does not change the model time settings or underlying calculations, it simply filters for the time range you've selected.

Dashboard viewers (who don't have edit access to the underlying model) can easily toggle the period they are looking at by themselves (although the default period will be set by model editors).

There are also dynamic 'suggested' options (e.g. Actuals, Current year, Last 3 months of Actuals, Forecast), which will automatically update the visible time range based off changes to either the Last Actual Date, or calendar time. e.g. if your time filter is set to "Last 3 months of actuals", and you roll forward your model's Last Actual Date, the filter will auto-adjust for the latest 3 months of actuals.

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.

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".