Goals are a great way to hold your clients accountable and track their weight loss progress, and they are the central feature of the Fit Clients software. There are main types of goals, client and group. Client goals are used to track the goals of individual clients, group goals are used to be shared between two or more clients.
You can create a goal by going to the client or group goals list page (Goals > Clients or Goals > Groups) and clicking the ‘Add’ button, or going to the goals page of a specific client or group.
Goal Settings
We’ve done our best to make the goal system as flexible as possible. Below is a description of each setting.
Type - Fit Clients currently has three methods of tracking goal progress: weight, body fat, and measurements. Body fat and measurements can be enabled or disabled in your account settings.
If you choose the measurements option you choose which available measurements you want to include in your goal. You can add or remove measurements from your account at any time by going to the account settings section.
Objective - There are two goal objectives, to gain or lose weight/body fat/measurement.
Goal Amount - The goal amount is the number of weight/body fat/measurement your client is trying to achieve. It can be an absolute (e.g. to weigh 150 lbs) or relative (to lose 20 lbs) number.
Goal Deadline - Naturally, the goal deadline is the date your client wants to complete his or her goal. You can optionally choose a ‘no deadline’ option, which means the goal will remain active until your client reaches their goal.
Note: Goals are automatically started when you create them, so there’s no need to specify a start date.
Reward and Punishment - You can specify a reward and punishment for reaching, or failing to reach a goal. While it is an optional setting, we’ve found that they increase accountability and make reaching the goal more fun!
Weigh In Day - This is the day of the week that the goal is expecting the client to weigh in. We recommend Mondays, as it will be less likely your clients will ‘cheat’ over the weekend.
Weigh In Frequency - Weigh in frequency is how often you want your clients to weigh in (which updates the goal). We recommend once a week, but a longer frequency might make more sense for long term goals.
Missed Weigh In Emails - When your client misses a scheduled weigh in you have the option of sending them an email notifications that asks them to weigh in. This setting determines if, and when, those emails should be sent.
Goal Inactive Setting - This setting determines when the goal will become inactive if your client stops weighing in. When a goal becomes inactive Fit Clients will send an email to your client letting them know their goal is in danger of being cancelled. Also, it will show up as inactive in goal lists (yellow), and will appear in a notification on your home screen.
Goal Cancellation Setting - This setting is the determines the length of time between a client’s last weigh in and when the goal will become cancelled. If a goal is cancelled it is essentially deleted from the system. You will receive a notification on your home page letting you know, you can click on that notification to view the cancelled goal, and reactivate it if desired.
Goal Statuses
Waiting for Weigh Ins - A goal has a ‘waiting for weigh ins’ status if the client doesn’t have any weigh ins since the goal was created. For group goals, each client in the group needs to weigh in before the ‘waiting for weigh ins’ status will change.
On Pace - A status of ‘on pace’ means the client or group is on track to meet their goal before or on their deadline.
Not On Pace - ‘Not on pace’ means the client or group is projected to fail their goal if they continue at their current rate.
Completed - When a client or group meets their goal, the goal status changes to ‘ ‘completed’. This can happen before the deadline, if they meet their goal early. If they specified a reward for completing their goal, they can get it now!
Failed - When a client or group doesn’t meet their goal and the deadline has passed, the goal will have a ‘Failed’ status. If the goal has a punishment, it’s time to pay up.
Inactive - Goals become inactive if a client hasn’t been weighing in. Specifically when a goal becomes inactive depends on the goal’s inactive setting (covered in ‘Goal Settings’, above). Inactive goals will return to normal if the client weighs in (or clients, the in case of a group).
Deleted - A goal will be deleted if it is inactive for long enough. The specific time frame is determined by the goal setting. There is a short window where deleted goals can be reactivated by the admin, if the client wants to give it another shot. Look for the deleted goal notification on your home page, if you want to reactivate it.
Group Goals
For the most part group goals work like client goals. However, there are two key differences.
First, goal amounts can only be relative, meaning you can only enter a number you want the group to collectively gain or lose. For example, you might create a group goal of losing 20 pounds by January 1. The group has three members. Let’s say that in the time between when the goal was created and January 1st member one loses 8 lbs, member two loses 3 lbs, and member three loses 11 lbs, for a total of 22 lbs. In this case the goal would be successfully completed.
The second difference between group and client goals is that in order for a goal to be an active status, all group members need to have weighed in. If a member doesn’t weigh in, the goal could become cancelled or deleted (according to the goal’s settings).
Editing and Deleting Goals
Click on the ‘edit goal’ link at the bottom of the view goal page to make changes to a goal. Here you can change most of the settings on the goal.
To delete a goal, click the delete goal button at the bottom of the view goal page.
Next Targets
If you have ‘show next target’ enabled in your account settings, the ‘next target’ section will appear on the view goal page. This is the amount your clients need to weigh in at on their next scheduled weigh in to be on pace to reach their goal.