What happens if I forgot to enter data?

• Can I enter data I missed?
• I derailed because of not entering data, but I did the thing
• I tried adding data and it derailed my goal!

If you forget to add data on a beemergency day when your goal was in the red, you'll derail. That's why having reminders turned on is a good idea, if you don't interact with your dashboard a lot!

If it wasn't a beemergency, then you probably won't immediately derail or be charged (though this may depend on goal-type), but you won't get credit for what you've done and you'll lose some of your hard-earned safety buffer. You can go back and add the missing data retrospectively, though!

For many goals, you may not need to do your goal and add data every day. Beeminder checks whether you're on track or not every day, and if you're on the right side of the line, then you're safe even if you haven't added any data. So you can set or build up some buffer to make up for any data entry goofs.

Can I enter data I missed?

Not a problem! We absolutely recommend that you enter your data as soon as you've done the thing, but you can usually enter data for any day in the past at any time. If your goal has a manual data entry method and you forgot to put in your data yesterday, you can enter it today, as long as you make sure you update the date so that the value is submitted for the correct day.

If data is more than a few days old, you may need to use the "Advanced Entry" form to add your data, on the web version. You can also use the bot or apps to add data for any date, past or future!

If you use an integration to automatically report data, this may depend on the specific integration. If you can backdate entries in that integration, e.g. as in Toggl, then we'll reflect that as well. If you can only check things off for today, for example as in Todoist, then unfortunately you won't be able to add the missing data.

I derailed because of not adding data, but I did the thing

If you derailed on the goal because you forgot to enter your data, and you should actually have been safe, you should enter the data and then reply to the legitimacy check email so that support knows to undo your derailment — the sooner, the better!

I tried adding data and it derailed my goal!

On certain types of goals, like Do-Less goals, adding new data may derail you immediately if your data is suddenly on the wrong side of the bright red line for a previous day.

This might be correct, if your data was knowingly over or under the line (depending on the graph type). But if that comes as a surprise and you feel that you shouldn't have derailed, you can reply to the legitimacy check email to let support know and explain what happened, and we'll help straighten things out.

Keywords: forgetting to enter data, retrospective data