How to use formulas in monday work management

Move over, Microsoft Excel: In monday work management, you can perform calculations and manipulate data through the platform’s Formula Column feature. Using the monday.com Work OS formula functions, you can easily solve mathematical formulas by pulling data from columns or as standalone calculations. These capabilities allow you to get solutions to formulas faster and without requiring more than one application so you can easily harness your data to its fullest potential within one system.

SEE: monday.com Work OS review (TechRepublic)

This tutorial walks you through how to use formulas in monday work management, which was rated on TechRepublic as the best project management software for teams of all technical levels.

What you need to use formulas in monday work management

In order to add or use formula columns, you need to have an active monday.com Work OS account through a Pro or Enterprise plan.

Note: If you have a Pro plan and downgrade your account in the future, you will not lose the formula columns you have created.

How to add formulas in monday work management

To begin adding formulas, you will need to add the Formula Column to your board by selecting the + icon located at the top right of your board chart (Figure A).

Figure A

In the drop-down menu that appears, click Formula (Figure B).

Figure B

After adding your Formula Column, a formula builder will open on your page (Figure C). You can always access the formula builder by clicking within the column.

Figure C

Now that you’re in the formula builder, you can start creating your formula. On the board, you will see a list of the columns that you can use in your formulas, as well as a list of functions that monday work management offers (Figure D). You can use any of these functions to build your formula, or you can simply use traditional math symbols like + to add, – to subtract, or * to multiply.

Figure D

If you want to apply functions, monday.com makes it easy to understand the purpose of each function. Hover your mouse over a function to see a description of the function and an example of its application (Figure E).

Figure E

To build a formula, begin by selecting a cell within the Formula Column where you can start to type your formula. Then, you can use columns from your board and functions as you create your formula.

For example, if you want to see whether your organization’s spending is over or under budget, you can apply the following formula:

IF({Budgeted}>{Actual Spending},"Over budget","Under budget")

Another benefit of using monday work management is that the software uses syntax highlighting to help you easily construct the formulas; you can see this as specific segments of your formula are colored within the area.

For example, if a segment within the formula you created is red, that indicates there is an error within that part of your formula. Keep an eye out for this, as it can help you realize and resolve mistakes within your formula.

Tips and tricks for using formulas in monday work management

As with any software system that uses formulas, you must follow specific rules to ensure proper formula usage and to produce accurate calculations.

To reference a column and pull its value into your function, add the name of that column exactly as it appears on your boards within these braces symbols {} in your formula (Figure F). Additionally, formulas can include parentheses () to change the order of operations.

Figure F

Remember that values are case-sensitive, and when writing out your formula, you should capitalize words appropriately as they appear within your column.

If you choose to add commas in your formula columns, be careful, as they can represent something different depending on the function. For example, the comma would represent a multiplication symbol in a multiply function.

Always open and close statements by including a ( symbol before the statement to open it and a ) symbol after the statement to close it.

In formulas, text must be added in quotation marks in order for the software to distinguish it. Your quotation mark and comma formatting can also impact the effectiveness of your formula, and copying and pasting formulas from an external text editor may result in the formula builder reading it as illegal.

Finally, always include a 0 before the decimal when multiplying; otherwise, the formula will return an error.

The Formula Column lets you generate formulas based on compatible and incompatible columns.

Compatible columns: Check, Country, Creation Log, Date, Dependency, Dropdown, Email, Formula, Hour, Item ID, Last Updated, Connect Boards (previously Link to Item), Long Text, Numbers, Person, Phone, Rating, Status, Text, Timeline, Time Tracking, Vote, World Clock, Subitem Names and the Count of Subitems.

Incompatible columns: Autonumber, Color Picker, Files, Link, Location, Mirror, Progress Tracking, Tags and Week.

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