Guides · Updated 24 Sep 2026

SLA tracking on monday.com: a target for each status

An SLA on a board is a promise about time: new requests are picked up within a working day, approvals take no more than two. The clock starts when an item enters a status and stops when it leaves.

Why a due date is not an SLA

NIST's glossary, quoting SP 800-47 Rev. 1, describes a service-level agreement as a commitment between a service provider and its customers that sets, among other things, the expected performance level, such as response times.

A due date is one fixed day per item. An SLA is a rule per status that applies to every item that enters it and restarts when the item moves on. Setting a date by hand for each item, and moving it every time the status changes, is the part that breaks.

What good SLA tracking needs

• A target for each status that has one, and none for statuses such as Waiting on customer.
• A warning before the target passes, not only after.
• Counting in working time when the team works business hours, so a Friday-evening request is not late on Monday morning.
• Someone who is told when a target does pass.

What monday.com has built in

monday.com has its own SLA column, and monday.com's article marks it as only available on monday service, on the Tickets board. You pick a status column such as Priority, set a target time for each of its labels, choose when the clock starts and which statuses end it or pause it, and each ticket shows Within, About to breach, Breached or Paused. It counts only the working hours of the account's default schedule; in the article's words, custom schedules are not taken into consideration.

On other boards, such as work management, CRM or dev, the closest built-in pieces include a date column in Deadline Mode and automations that remind someone when a date arrives or every day after it has passed. monday.com's help center also documents a two-automation setup for any board: stamp a helper date when the status changes, then act a set number of days later (Trigger an automation after a set number of days). That gives one timer per status, with a helper date column for each. Every warning or escalation step is another automation, and the article does not describe counting only working hours or pausing the clock.

How Stale & SLA does it

In the board's Stale & SLA settings you set an SLA target, in days, for each status that has one. With business hours on, two days means two working days of the board's calendar. Each item then has an SLA state: ok, at risk (80% of its target used up) or breached.

Two automation triggers, When an item is at risk of missing its SLA and When an item breaches its SLA, connect to monday.com's own actions, so you can notify someone: in Automate, choose Create from scratch and search for the trigger. The escalation ladder in the app's settings notifies everyone in the item's chosen people column and posts an update on the item, and can add further steps after more days.

The SLA & aging dashboard widget counts the board's items by SLA state, and What needs attention, opened from the board header, lists the breached and at-risk items first.

To see when one request falls due, the free SLA deadline calculator adds a target in working hours or days to a start time, with nights, weekends and public holidays left out.

Frequently asked

Does the clock run while we wait for the customer?

Only in statuses that have a target. Leave Waiting on customer without one and time there never breaches.

Which boards does it work on?

Any monday.com board with a status column. Each board keeps its own business hours and holidays.

How often is the SLA state checked?

At least once a day for every board, and right away when an admin clicks Save & run now.