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 left of each model.
Your Time Settings generate a sequence of time steps in Causal. For example: if your model is Monthly from January 2022 to December 2023, then there will be 24 time steps in total. The first time step corresponds to January 2022, and the 24th time step corresponds to December 2023.
Note that the time step index always start at 0, not 1. So 0 corresponds to the first time step of the model (e.g. Jan'22), 3 corresponds to the fourth time step (Apr'22), and so on.
Note: if you change the start date or granularity of a model, you will no longer be able to compare with prior versions. Extending the end date of your model will not affect version comparison, however.
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.
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.
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 table/chart summaries (it will affect the yearly roll-up).
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".
Last modified 4mo ago