A calculated field is a value you define with a formula instead of one that arrives from the source system. Revenue minus cost gives margin; orders divided by visits gives conversion rate; today’s date minus invoice date gives days outstanding. The formula is written once and the result behaves like any other column: you can chart it, filter by it, sort by it and total it.
Calculated fields matter because the numbers people actually care about are rarely stored anywhere. A SaaS company stores subscriptions and payments, not monthly recurring revenue. A clinic stores appointments and no-shows, not utilisation. Without calculated fields those figures live in a spreadsheet someone maintains by hand, and the moment that person is on holiday the report stops.
The trap is defining the same calculation in several places. If “gross margin” is written slightly differently on the sales dashboard and the finance dashboard, the two will disagree and nobody will know which to trust. Rule of thumb: define each calculation once, name it plainly, and reuse it everywhere. When the definition changes, it changes everywhere at the same time.
In Klayara, calculated fields are built with a formula language of 138 functions covering arithmetic, text, dates, conditions and running totals, and each one is available to every dashboard, report and AI answer in the workspace. See formulas and calculations and the related term metric.