If your daily steps are increasing on Pacer’s Home screen but your Group/Club Challenge progress (progress bar or leaderboard score) isn’t changing, the cause is usually one of these:

• The challenge is not active yet, already ended, or you’re not fully joined 
• The challenge uses specific scoring rules (daily cap, points, GPS-only distance, etc.) 
• Your steps aren’t flowing from the correct step source into Pacer 
• Your phone is blocking background updates (common on Android) 
• There’s a normal sync/refresh delay between your steps and the leaderboard

This guide walks you through the fastest checks first. (Many of the same rules apply to large/global challenges too.)

What you’ll notice

• Pacer Home steps go up, but the challenge shows 0 or doesn’t move 
• Your challenge score updates hours later 
• You completed an activity, but the challenge shows no credit

1) Confirm the challenge is active and you’re actually enrolled

1. Open the Group/Club → Challenge page. 
2. Confirm: 
   • Status shows Active / In Progress 
   • You’re listed as a participant (not “Pending”) 
   • You’re viewing the correct club and the correct challenge 

Important: Many group challenges do not auto-enroll everyone. Organizers can publish a challenge, but members still need to join.

2) Check the challenge rules (very common cause)

Different challenge types may score differently, for example:

• Step Challenge: may have a daily step cap (extra steps won’t increase today’s credited score) 
• Daily Goal / Points Challenge: you may earn max 1 point/day after hitting the goal 
• Distance Challenge: may be GPS-only (normal daily steps won’t count)

What to do:

1. Open the challenge Details / Rules 
2. Confirm: 
   • What counts: Steps vs Distance vs Points 
   • Whether there’s a daily cap 
   • Whether GPS-only is required 

These rule-based behaviors are a top reason “I walked but progress didn’t change.”

3) Pull to refresh + reopen the app (quick fix)

1. Open the challenge leaderboard and pull down to refresh (if available). 
2. Fully close Pacer (swipe away), then reopen it and check again.

Leaderboards can update with a delay (sometimes ~30 minutes or more depending on the system/data flow).

4) Verify Pacer is recording steps first

Challenge progress cannot update if Pacer isn’t receiving step data.

• Check Pacer Home → Today steps 
• If Today steps are not increasing, fix step tracking first (permissions/background) before troubleshooting challenge scoring.

5) Time zone / “challenge day” mismatch

If you traveled, changed time zones, or your phone clock is manual:

• Your “today” may not match the challenge scoring window 
• Steps may appear under a different day

Some challenges are based on the organizer’s time zone, which can make today’s steps look like “0” until the challenge day aligns.

6) If it still doesn’t update

Try:

• Update Pacer (and the connected app: Fitbit/Garmin Connect/Samsung Health) 
• Disconnect and reconnect the step source inside Pacer 
• Restart your phone, then refresh the challenge again

These steps are commonly recommended to resolve persistent sync states.

Contact Support (include this to speed up resolution)

Before contacting support, collect:

• Group/Club name + Challenge name 
• Challenge type (Steps / Distance / Daily Goal / Points) 
• Approx. time you walked and expected credit 
• Screenshots: Pacer Home today steps + challenge page showing no update