Distributed Amount
Projections are about taking a total amount for
something, say a project cost, and spreading it over
several timeperiods. There are several ways you could
spread a cost in this way, the common ones being to
spread it uniformly (ie at a constant rate using UniSpread) or to spread it
according to an S-curve (SCurve), which generally
concentrates most of the cost centrally in the duration
of the project.
There are 4 families in the Distributed Amount
Projections category:
- The basic Time Spread family contains
all the no-frills basic functions of the Distributed
Amount Projections category. These start from the
building block UniSpread function which simply spreads
an amount uniformly, through to functions that spread
amount according to a specified curve, such as SCurve and the highly generalised
DistSpread. Finally there
are a couple of functions, TStepSpread and FStepSpread, which spread an
amount according to stepped annual rates that you
specify, with the function just determining either the
Start or Finish date.
- The Time Spread Periodic family
takes the basic time spread functions and allows you to
repeat the spreading process at intervals, for example
for maintenance upgrades, workovers and
refitting.
- The Time Spread Weighted family is
for functions where you want more control over the
distribution or pattern of disbursement. UniSpreadS deals with the
highly specific situation of an annually recurring
seasonal pattern. WeightSpread is the most
general of this family, enabling you to specify any
number of Weights, which are
applied at equal intervals between Start and Finish to spread the overall Total. If you don"t want the
Weights spread equally you can use FWeightSpread or
TWeightSpread.
- The Time Spread History family is a
set of time spread functions adapted for use in
budgeting situations where you have historic payments
(PmtsHistory) or ActualsToDate. What these
functions do is a straightforward Time Spread function but, in
the case of forecast payments, adjusted so that the
overall Total projected is unchanged by the historic
payments. This turns out to be a useful technique for
budgets that are constantly updated, where you can
either choose to update the PmtsHistory with the actuals
(as in SCurveH), or specify
the ActualsToDate (as in SCurveAdj).
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