Short answer:
Month-End productivity is your goal, while MTD productivity shows your current progress—so they will naturally differ during the month.

This difference is expected and comes from how SMART calculates and distributes hours across the month.
When the cockpit is locked on Productivity, the selected value (e.g. 2.29) is a month-end goal, not a value applied to each day or MTD.
In the cockpit, Month-End (ME) represents the goal, while MTD shows your current status, which can vary during the month.

What the productivity lock controls 

The locked productivity defines the total SMART hours for the full month, based on the full-month cost driver (e.g. room nights). 
As a result: 

• The Month-End (ME) SMART productivity aligns with your locked value.  
• The lock does not force the same productivity on MTD or daily level.  

How MTD SMART productivity is calculated

MTD SMART productivity is recalculated using only the days that have passed:

• MTD SMART hours = sum of daily SMART hours for elapsed days
• MTD productivity = MTD cost driver ÷ MTD SMART hours (same logic as Month-End, but applied to MTD only)

Because this uses a subset of the month, it will not necessarily match the locked month-end SMART productivity.

MTD productivity is calculated using MTD cost driver (4,810) divided by MTD SMART hours (1,008), resulting in 4.77.

Why MTD productivity differs from the locked target

SMART distributes monthly hours day-by-day using operational patterns, not in a straight line. This includes:

• Differences depending on the day of the week
• Secondary cost driver(s) patterns
• Historical staffing patterns and minimum staffing rules
• Min/Max staffing levels

As a result, the mix of hours and activity in the first part of the month (MTD) is rarely a perfect “mini version” of the full month, causing the MTD productivity to drift above or below the locked value.

Simple operational example why daily and MTD productivity can look “off”

A common scenario for a housekeeping department:

• Sunday: Many departures, but limited cleaning (to avoid high weekend labor costs)
  → Few hours on many rooms → high productivity
• Monday: Fewer guests, but additional cleaning is done
  → Many hours on fewer rooms → low productivity

This reflects a typical operational pattern, where work is intentionally shifted between days. SMART’s machine learning identifies these historical patterns and uses them when distributing hours.

Viewed per day, productivity may look extreme. Across days, the total hours and cost remain aligned with the plan.

Key takeaway

• Month-End productivity = your goal
• MTD productivity = your current position
• Differences are expected and reflect timing and operational patterns, not an issue in SMART

How to interpret this in the cockpit

• Focus on Month-End productivity vs the locked target
• Use MTD and daily productivity to understand timing and operations, not performance in isolation
• Validate performance by checking total hours vs SMART, not just the ratio