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Calendarization
Updated over 6 months ago

Calendarization is a method for allocating bill cost and consumption data to appropriate calendar months for analysis and reporting.

👍 This article will help you:

  • Understand the fundamentals of calendarization for bills

  • Learn where calendarized data are available

Calendarization is used for a variety of purposes at different organizations: fiscal quarter or fiscal year reporting, budgeting for utility expenditures or capital improvements, issuing charges to tenants or departments, and conducting energy performance evaluations—just to name a few.

Calendarization methods

Most bills have start and end dates that do not correspond to an exact calendar month. Atrius offers five calendarization methods to more accurately represent month-to-month and year-to-year cost and consumption, regardless of the various start and end dates found on your bills.

  • Prorated months: Allocate data on a month-by-month basis by prorating daily cost and consumption over each day of the bill period

  • Calendar months: Allocate data to the month in which the majority of days occur over the bill period. If, during a given bill range, the same number of days occur in two or more months, then data will be allocated to the last of those months

  • Bill point start dates: Allocate data to the month in which the start date of the billing period occurs

  • Bill point end dates: Allocate data to the month in which the end date of the bill period occurs

  • Statement dates: Allocate data to the month in which the issue date of the invoice, statement or bill occurs

Choosing a calendarization method

For the best distribution of bill data we recommend using prorated months. When calendar months, bill point start dates, bill point end dates or statement dates methods are used data may be allocated to an unexpected month depending on the method selected and dates present on the utility provider bill. See examples of each method below:

Prorated Months Example:

Cost and consumption from the bill are applied evenly to all days:

  • Bill point start date: 01/05/2024

  • Bill point end date: 02/06/2024

  • Consumption: 100 kWh

  • Cost: $22

The bill spans 32 days (inclusive). Therefore, consumption is prorated to 3.125 kWh/day, and cost is prorated to $0.68/day. ✔

Calendar Months Examples:

Example 1: The majority of days during the bill range occur in January:

  • Bill point start date: 01/05/2024

  • Bill point end date: 02/06/2024

  • Bill period length: 32 days

  • Month: January

Example 2: The majority of days during the bill range occur in February:

  • Bill point start date: 01/10/2024

  • Bill point end date: 03/15/2024

  • Bill period length: 53 days

  • Month: February

Example 3: The majority of days during the bill range occur in both January and March, therefore allocate to the last of those two or more months:

  • Bill point start date: 01/01/2024

  • Bill point end date: 03/31/2024

  • Bill period length: 90 days

  • Month: March

Bill Point Start Dates Example:

Start date is in January:

  • Bill start date: 01/05/2024

  • Bill end date: 02/06/2024

  • Month: January

Bill Point End Dates Example:

End date is in February:

  • Bill start date: 01/05/2024

  • Bill end date: 02/06/2024

  • Month: February

Statement Dates Example:

Issued date is in February:

  • Issued date: 02/20/2024

  • Bill start date: 01/15/2024

  • Bill end date: 02/15/2024

  • Due date: 03/01/2024

  • Month: February

Using calendarization

Calendarization methods exist in the following locations in Atrius:

Section

Location

Bills

Select the Data Manager tab of a bill point

Dashboards

Select 'Calendarize by' in one of the following cards:
- Portfolio Trends
- Portfolio Year-over-Year Trends
- Portfolio Comparisons
- Building Trends
- Building Year-over-Year Trends
- Building Comparisons
- Building Readout

For cards, specific metrics will reveal the following calendarization options:

Metric

Calendarization options

Metric = Consumption / Production
Metric = Cost

Prorated months
Calendar months
Bill point start dates
Bill point end dates
Statement dates

Metric= Bill itemization

Bill point end dates

Metric= Peak demand bill itemization

No calendarization option available

A note about timeboxing

When Calendarize by = 'Prorated months', Atrius takes the resulting day-resolution bill data set and applies a timeboxing method to prevent the comparison period end date from extending beyond the main period end date. This ensures that the delta calculated between the main period and comparison period is as accurate as possible.

Other notes about calendarization

  • Calendarization typically does not appreciably affect annual totals, but it can produce large variances from one month to the next.

  • In dashboards, Calendarize by 'Prorated months' is enabled by default—unless the metric is bill itemization. Bill itemizations default to 'Bill point end dates'.

  • In dashboards, when the calendarization method is NOT ‘Prorated months’, then Period is limited to options with monthly resolutions: This year, Last year, Last 12 months and Custom period.

📘 Contact Customer Support

For any questions regarding this article, please contact Atrius Customer Support.

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