Start cumulative / year goal in past (on Jan 1?)

Newbee
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Maybe the answer to this is obvious, but I wasn’t able to find it by searching the UI, FAQ and forum.

I started a new year’s resolution on the first of the month, and joined Beeminder only yesterday, converting that resolution to an auto-summing goal. It looks like by default, the goal begins on the date you create it. If possible, I’d like to make my goal “backdate” to the first of the month, since it’s a cumulative per year type of goal. Is it possible to set the start date for a per/year goal?

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I think emailing support would be the way to go. The admins can almost change anything.

P.S.: I just thought of this: It might be possible to add data through the advanced entry that dates back that far. Now, I don’t know if beeminder lets you do this past the creation date of the goal. But it’s worth a try.

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Thanks for the tip - you were right! In the “Data” tab under “import data” I found this:

You can paste historical data into the Advanced Entry form (next to the graph) using a format like this:
2015 08 24 123 “optional comment”

I entered data back to the first of the month with the advanced entry.

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[Side note for any future folk, since it sounds like this example had a happy ending…]

Your slope gets backdated too, iirc, which means that you’d better have set the initial rate to what you actually achieved, rather than what you aspire to do. Of course, that’s back in the first steps of creating a goal, which doesn’t help much for this scenario.

If it all goes horribly wrong, email support and we’ll sort it out.

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