Parameters and units

A monitored parameter is something you read off an item and record: a tank level, a temperature, running hours, a meter reading. It is the "looking at the thing" half of the two ways of knowing something.

Parameters are defined on the tracker group, not on individual items, and every item in the group is offered every one of the group's parameters. Recording stays optional per item.

Defining a parameter

On the group's settings, in the parameter rows. Each parameter takes:

Field	What it decides
Name	What the reading is called.
Unit	What it is measured in — see Units below.
Goal	Reading where there is only what was found, or a target where there is something to plan against.
Recording interval	How often a reading is expected.
Display order	Where it sits among the others — see below.

Goal: Reading versus a target

Setting Goal to Reading drops the Plan field. Use it where there is no target — a stocktake count, an ambient temperature, a meter that simply reads what it reads.

Leave a target where the point of the parameter is the comparison: production against plan, consumption against expectation.

The plan

A parameter with a target carries a Plan: the figure a reading is judged against. It is what the dashboard's dial, variance and green-or-red standing are measured from, what Period Reports holds each figure to, and what a period summary compares the filed figures to.

The single figure is the plan for every day. Where the plan genuinely changes from one period to the next, set it by period instead.

Changing the plan

Every reading is judged by the plan in force on its own day, on every screen and in every export: the dashboard, Reports → Period, the items list, Supervise, the parameter's own page and the readings you enter. A change of plan never rewrites what a reading filed before it was held to.

• The day it takes effect. Change the plan on the tracker group and a Takes effect from date appears under it. Left empty, the new plan starts today. Pick an earlier day to judge readings already filed against it, or a later day to set it ahead of time. Before you save, the screen says which readings an earlier day re-judges, or what holds until a later day arrives.
• A plan set ahead of time is shown under the field as Target changes to 120 on 20 Oct, and the plan shown stays today's until that day comes.
• A correction the same day replaces the earlier change: the later one counts.
• Days are your site's days. A change made on the 15th starts at midnight on the 15th where the readings are taken. A shift is judged by the day it ends, the day it is filed and shown under: a night shift ending at 07:00 on the 15th is the 15th's.

Wherever a plan is shown for a stretch of days in which it changed, it is shown as typed — 100 → 120 — never as an average of the two, and one line says when it changed: Target changed on 15 Oct: 100 → 120. The parameter's page lists every change under Target history: the day it took effect, the plan, who changed it and when.

Plan by period

Under the plan sits Plan by period: a different figure for each period — January 100 000, February 120 000 — at any cadence from daily to annual.

Column	What it is
Cadence	How long each period is: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual.
From	The first day the period covers.
To	Follows from the start and the cadence; it is not typed.
Plan	The figure for the whole period, in the parameter's own unit.

A reading in a period is judged against that period's figure. A day no period covers falls back to the single plan above — the plan in force on that day — and a figure that adds up counts the readings filed on those days at that plan, beside the periods' own share.

A window that crosses periods takes its share of each

A dashboard figure over a range, or a period summary whose dates straddle two plan periods, is judged against the sum of the periods it crosses, pro rata by day. Nothing is double-counted at the join.

A capped range-based figure is judged against the plan for the days it uses.

The editor is in two places, and they are the same rows:

• On the tracker group, under each numeric parameter's Plan — once the parameter has been saved.
• In the form builder, on a field linked to a parameter. The periods belong to the parameter, so a row added from the form is the row the group shows.

Rows marked Set by a mine plan

Where the Mining module has published a plan onto this parameter, its rows are shown here but cannot be edited here. They change from the plan that wrote them — unpublish it, or compute it again.

A parameter whose goal is Reading has no plan and no periods: there is nothing for a reading to hit.

Display order

Parameters can be given a display order, which controls where each appears on the screens that list them.

There are two independent bands: recorded parameters are ordered among themselves, then computed ones among themselves. A computed parameter never sorts up into the middle of the recorded ones.

An absent display order is not zero

A parameter with no order set is not treated as first. It falls in with the others by the ordinary ordering rather than jumping to the top.

Computed parameters

A parameter can be computed from others rather than read off an item — litres per hour, a percentage, a variance. It carries a formula over other parameters instead of a reading screen.

A computed parameter may reference another computed parameter. Trackapt resolves these in repeated passes until the figures settle, so the order you define them in does not matter.

A cross-group figure needs access to every group feeding it

A formula spanning several groups lives on a Global Metrics group. If you are whitelisted on some of its operands' groups but not all of them, the figure is withheld rather than computed from the half you can see.

A total assembled from an arbitrary subset is worse than no total, because nothing on screen would say which parts were missing. You will see the parameter listed with no value rather than a figure you cannot trust.

A balance cannot be an operand

Computed parameters work over other parameters. A balance is a different mechanism and cannot be referenced from a formula, so cross-mechanism figures — litres-per-hour-run against a booked balance, for instance — cannot be expressed this way.

Form fields can also be used as operands in a computed parameter. See Computed columns.

Interval-based and range-based

A computed parameter is one of two kinds, shown as a badge in the group's settings:

• Interval Based — worked out for every time slot, alongside the parameters it uses. It has a dial on the dashboard and a row on Period Reports. Over a period, one that does not add up shows the average of its figure for each slot.
• Range Based — worked out once over the whole period you pick, from each parameter's total for the period (or its average, where it does not add up). Its parameters may be recorded at different intervals, and it may use form fields. It has a row on Period Reports and a dial on the dashboard. A dial for one that adds up reads No target when its parameter has no plan by period for the days on screen, which no screen sets on a computed figure.

Accumulates

Accumulates says whether a figure adds up over a period. Tonnes moved does: a month shows its total, and its plan is added up reading by reading. Cost per ton or a percentage does not: a month shows its average, and the plan set on the parameter holds for any period. Trackapt unticks it for you when a computed figure's unit is a rate, such as litres/ton. Check it yourself for a percentage, and for any parameter whose total would mean nothing.

The unit and the plan of a computed parameter

Trackapt works out a computed parameter's unit from its formula: litres divided by tonnes is litres/tonne. It shows under Result in the parameter's settings.

• Before you write the formula, the unit picker is already there, and you can pick a unit straight away.
• When the unit worked out is in the unit library, the unit picker shows it. Pick another unit there to use your own; untick Use my own unit to go back to the one worked out.
• When it is a compound unit the library does not hold yet, such as litres/tonne, it is saved as worked out, and the settings say so. To group it with every other figure in that unit, add it to the library: tick Use my own unit, choose Add new unit, then Compound. Once the library holds it, the unit follows the formula again.
• When the library cannot hold it at all, such as one over hours, it is saved as worked out, and the settings say that too.
• When the formula has no unit of its own, a ratio of like things (tonnes over tonnes) or a formula using functions, pick one, such as %.

The plan is worked out the same way, from the plans of the parameters in the formula. Tick Use my own plan to type your own. When it cannot be worked out, because a parameter in the formula has no plan, type it.

Capping at the last date every input has figures

A range-based figure can be capped at the last date for which every parameter and form field in its formula has figures. Tick Cap at the last date every input has figures under Result in its settings. It is off until you tick it.

Use it when the inputs are recorded at different rates. Tonnage estimated from truck loads is filed every day; a survey is filed when it is done. Over 1 to 20 September with the last survey on the 15th, a variance between the two would set twenty days of trucks against fifteen days of survey. With the box ticked, the figure uses each input's figures dated 1 to 15 September.

• Each input's last figure in the period is found, and the figure stops at the earliest of the days those figures cover. A daily figure covers its day, a weekly one the seven days from the date it is filed under, and a monthly one its whole month. A survey's figure measures the ground moved between the two surveys it compares, so it covers up to the later survey's day, whichever day it is dated.
• Each reading counts for the day it is dated, in your own calendar.
• Every input counts, including one that is averaged rather than added up: a grade last sampled on the 3rd caps the figure at the 3rd.
• Where it stops, the figure says so, for example Capped at 15 Sept 2026: SURVEY TONNAGE last measured on 15 Sept 2026, on Period Reports, on its dial and in every export. Its plan is the plan for those days: the plan set on the parameter as it stands on the last of them, or the period's plan for those days.
• When an input's last figure covers days past where the figure stops, such as a monthly figure in a period that ends on the 20th, the figure says that too.
• When an input's figures start after the first day of the period, such as a survey first done on the 5th, the figure says so. The start is not cut: the trucks from the 1st still count.
• When every input has figures to the end of the period, and none runs past it, nothing is cut and nothing is said.
• When an input has no figure in the period at all, the figure shows no data, as it does with the box unticked. When the inputs share no days, because one starts after another's last figure, the figure shows no data and, on Period Reports, says why, even while parameters without data are hidden. It has no dial.
• A blank reading is not a figure: it neither moves the date nor counts as 0. So ticking the box can change a figure even where nothing is cut.

Units

A unit of measure is picked from a unit library, never typed free-hand.

Why this matters

Typed units drift. litres, Litres, L and ltr are one unit and four strings, and nothing downstream can group, convert or total across them. A report that should show one figure shows four.

Every field in Trackapt that captures a unit uses the unit picker instead of a text box. The picker lets you add, edit or delete a unit inline, so standardising costs you nothing at the point of entry.

A computed parameter's unit is worked out from its formula instead of typed; see The unit and the plan of a computed parameter.

What is stored

The unit's canonical plural. If you pick Litre, what is stored is litres.

Adding a unit: basic or compound

Add new unit offers two ways of writing one.

Basic — you type the plural and the singular yourself. Use it for something nothing else is built from: tonnes, hours, litres.

Compound — you build it by clicking units that already exist, so its spelling can never disagree with the library. Choose whether each click lands above the line (what the unit measures) or below it (what it is measured per), and click the parts:

What you click	What is saved
tonnes, then cubic metres below the line	tonnes/cubic metre
litres, then hours below the line	litres/hour
tonnes and metres, both above the line	tonnes·metres
metres clicked twice above the line	metres^2

The denominator uses each unit's singular, which is why both forms are asked for on a basic unit. Aliases for a compound unit are suggested from its parts.

Build rate units rather than typing them

A typed t/m3 is a fifth spelling of a unit you already have. Built from the library, tonnes/cubic metre stays the same string everywhere it is used, and every figure carrying it can be grouped and totalled.

Some units are shared, not yours

Units that are part of the shared library are available to everyone and are not editable from here. Your own account's units sit alongside them.

How units are written on screen

Thing	Convention	Example
A group or item name	Uppercase	DIESEL TANK 1
A unit	Lowercase	litres

This is a display convention, applied consistently across the app.

Reading a parameter

See Recording a reading.

Alerts

A parameter can carry alert rules that fire when a reading crosses a line. Who hears about it is filtered by who may see the item, exactly as everything else is.

Parameter alerts can be muted per parameter. Balance alerts cannot — the mute is a property of a parameter, and a balance is not a parameter.