What’s the best way to set up a one time goal in Beeminder? I would then enter in a new one every day. Like let’s say today I enter in a goal to clean out the garage, while tomorrow I’ll enter in a goal to do all the dishes.
It seems like everything in Beemender is set up for recurring goals rather than ones that change every day?
There’s a blog post about this and it’s also my preferred way of doing it:
https://blog.beeminder.com/mustdo/
I have used several goals like this in different areas of my life at the same time and have loved it. For my goals, what’s required is that I work on the item until the task is completed or for at least 45 minutes (in case I run head-first into a major planning fallacy).
It’s one of my all-time favourite Beeminder goal formats. I hope it works for you too!
At risk of being self-promotional, I built TaskRatchet just for that. It’s still early days, but people are doing great stuff with it already. Also would love to hear your feedback as a first-time user–you can send anything you run into to nathan@taskratchet.com. Also, it integrates with Beeminder. 
Thanks so much for that pointer, Mary. I went ahead and set it up as you suggested and put in a pledge starting with $5 and going up to $270. Yesterday, I derailed, and it was reflected correctly on the chart, but it still didn’t charge me $5 (though it did correctly increase the pledge to $10). Is it because the target date is set to 10-21-2031 ? If so, why would it set it by default for a date so far away that I would never get charged?
Hi @aturetsky! One possibility is that it’s just the fact that there’s a 24-hour gap between when you derail and when the charge goes through. However, the easiest way for us to be sure is if you email support@beeminder.com with a link to the goal, so we can take a look!
I see. So then the problem is not the target date? But, if so, what does the “target date” field do?
The due date is when you officially derail and even if you add data between the date your +1 (or +x) is due and the date the charge goes through, you’re still charged since it’s the date due that matters.
We give another 24 hours after the derailment before we process the charge so that if something goes wrong, users have time to get a hold of us and we can stop the charge going through. (Instead of processing refunds, which takes the money out of the user’s account for a few days and also costs us processing fees.)
So, effectively, the due date is the one you worry about with respect to your goals and the time the charge goes through is just a matter of the accounting of it, but you can expect it to be 24 hours after your derailment.
Got it. That explains it. But then what is the significance of the “target date” - i.e. one that is currently set to 10-21-2031 by default?
The end date (which is what I think you mean) is about when you want the goal to end, and doesn’t have any effect on what/when you’re charged – charging just happens 24 hours after your datapoints are on the wrong side of the line (usually after the deadline).
For goals which don’t have an explicit end point, we set one like that faaaar into the future, so you’ll never be surprised by your goal ending all of a sudden. There’s no way currently to just not have an end date, so all goals have one.
I see. Okay, so I did get charged for that derailment. But now it says I’ll be charged $10 on May 2nd, instead of tonight. Is that because of the “ratchet” or because of “respite” (I left those to their defaults). What would I need to set them to if I want to be “fined” on a daily basis?