Why does Beeminder think it's already tomorrow or still yesterday?

On your Beeminder dashboard, each goal has a dropdown you can use to enter data for today and yesterday. Sometimes Beeminder's idea of what "today" is does not match what day it actually is in your part of the world: it can say "today" is the 5th when your calendar says it's only the 4th, for example, or keep saying it's the 5th when it's already the 6th. There are two causes for this: custom deadlines and non-matching timezones.

The same applies when your goal says the date hasn't changed yet, even though it's after midnight.

Custom deadlines

This is the most common cause for an apparent discrepancy. If a goal has its deadline set to earlier than midnight, and you're looking at the goal after that time has passed, you'll find that the date has already rolled over to the next day. Conversely, if you have a deadline later than midnight, the date won't change until the deadline, instead of changing after midnight.

In other words, the deadline time you set for a goal sets the boundaries of the goal's calendar days, as if you're moving the time midnight and the date change hit.

If your goals have varying deadlines, "today" might mean the 5th for some, but still the 4th for others. Make sure that you pick the right day the work should count for before you submit your data! We've set the default so that if the goal thinks it's the 5th, then the data entry form will say the 5th unless you change it. You need to manually refresh the page if your deadline has passed to get this to update, though: it doesn't update dynamically.

 Check out "What times are allowed?" in the deadlines help page for more information.

Timezones

The simpler (but less common) culprit is that your timezone is set incorrectly! Your timezone isn't synced up automatically because that might derail you instantly (depending on your direction of travel), so if it doesn't match your current timezone, you'll need to update it in your account settings.

If none of this seems like the issue, it's also worth refreshing your page. We don't automatically refresh after your deadline or after midnight, so things can be stale or look weird until you refresh. If you're still stuck, then contact support to talk it over! We'd love to get it figured out with you.


Keywords: Beeminder's conception of dates, end-of-day, deadlines

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