When you first enter an asset, you may have to guess the usage rate. Later, you will correct it based on your actual usage. Described below are the steps to take to (1) discover your actual usage rate and (2) change the usage rate, if necessary. You may need to do this a time or two as you "home in" in on a rate that is fairly constant for a particular shopping schedule.
We'll use the following example:
| You entered a one-kilogram jar of Best Coffee Creamer with an activation date of 5/10/02. You estimated that you would use 720 mg per day. This estimate turned out to be much too low. After not quite three months (8/3/02) you can see that the jar is about half empty, but the Current Assets report on the Need Properties page shows .94 Entity. What do you do? |
Step 1: Discovering your actual usage rate. First, go to the Current Assets panel of the Need Properties page for Food >> Beverages >> Coffee >> Creamer. A good way to get there is to click on the "Qty Left" reported for the need on the Shopping List. You then change the Amount: Actual now to 0.50. See Figure 1, below.
Figure 2 shows the changes after the Amount: Actual now has been changed to 0.50 and you clicked the "S" button to save it.
Now that the Amount remaining has been changed, you can discover the Actual Use Rate by going to the Usage Rate Analysis page. You can do this by clicking on the "A" button as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 3, below, shows the Usage Rate Analysis page after you have made the change illustrated in Figures 1 and 2. At the top of the page you will see a section for listing Past & Current Usage Rates. In this example there are no past assets to be shown.
Included in the row of information are the Stated Use Rate and the Actual Use Rate (note that MakeLifeEasy converts the weight units to ounces). At the bottom of this section you will see the Average Use Rate for all the assets you have checked in the boxes at the right.
You have now discovered your actual usage rate. With this information you are now ready to go to Step 2 and change the usage rate.
Step 2: Changing the Usage Rate. The average for Past & Current Usage Rates is shown to be 0.207 oz/day (500 grams converted to 17.64 ounces divided by 85 days = .207). This rate is shown also in the New Usage Rates section as the proposed New Use Rate both for the Need and for the current Asset in the "A" (Active) status. To activate the new rate you put check marks in the boxes at right, and then click on the "OK" at the bottom of the form. If you wanted to enter a different rate, you would simply type it in the box in place of the proposed rate.
You must be sure to change the usage rate for the Asset because the new usage rate for the Need affects future purchases only.
This completes the usage rate change unless there are current assets in the Holding status. If there are, you would probably want to change the usage rate for those assets, also. To do that you would again go to the Current Assets panel and click on any asset in the Holding status. This will bring up the Asset Properties page for the asset. Click on Management in the upper menu bar. This will bring up the panel for entering the usage rate as shown in Figure 4.
For more information,
see the Need Use Rate Analysis page topic.