Baseline, target, actual and achievement

A baseline is the value of an indicator before the programme (or a given phase of it) begins — the honest starting point a target is measured against. Without a real baseline, a target is a guess about the future compared against nothing, and "improvement" cannot actually be demonstrated, only asserted.

A target is the value planned for an indicator in a specific period, set deliberately — ideally against the baseline and against what is realistically achievable with the resources committed, not set optimistically to please a funder and then quietly missed every period.

An actual (or result) is the value genuinely observed and reported for that same period, through the indicator's stated means of verification. Achievement or progress is simply actual divided by target for the same period, usually expressed as a percentage — and it is only meaningful when actual and target describe the exact same period, population and unit; comparing a quarterly actual against an annual target, for instance, produces a number that looks precise and means nothing.

A genuinely important and frequently mishandled distinction is additive versus non-additive indicators. An additive indicator is a genuine count that can be summed across partners, sites or periods without distorting its meaning — "number of farmers trained" summed across three Implementing Partners gives a real total. A non-additive indicator is typically a percentage, a rate, or an average — "% of farmer groups formally registered" cannot be summed across three partners; a 60% and a 70% average to 65% at most (and only if their denominators are equal), never to 130%. Averaging averages without knowing the underlying denominators is a similarly common way to quietly distort a genuine finding.

Deciding which behaviour an indicator should have — additive or non-additive — has to happen when the indicator is defined, before multiple teams start reporting against it. Deciding it retroactively, after a percentage indicator has already been summed for two reporting cycles, means those two cycles' reported figures were never actually meaningful.

Achievement is always actual ÷ target for the same period — computed the same way everywhere it's shown, from the indicator record to Report Builder. A missing target never silently reads as 0%, and a missing actual is labelled "No data reported" rather than hidden.

For an indicator assigned across several Implementing Partners, each partner can carry its own target; roll-up to the project total is either additive or non-additive depending on how the indicator is genuinely measured, so percentages are never wrongly summed past 100%.