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Periodic Drivers

Understand and create Periodic Change Drivers

How Periodic Change Drivers are used

Periodic Change Drivers are useful for creating outputs that change over time using a predefined curve or step function. You can set the value to change monthly, or by any number of months. The curves can float with variable dates like Plan Start, Plan End or Plan Cutover Date—or you can anchor the curve to a specific point in time using an absolute date. 

You can specify an initial seed value that is then changed over time. They can be used to make all kinds of assumptions like increasing conversion rates, reduction in costs over time etc. Absolute dates also help us model things like expected rent changes which may be tied to calendar years rather than planning windows.

How to create a Periodic Change Driver

In this example we’re planning for advertising costs to increase by 5% every quarter.

Go to Plans > Drivers

Create New Driver

  1. Set category to Periodic
  2. Choose the function (add or multiply)
  3. Choose the change amount (in this example we want to increase by 5%, so multiplying by 1.05
  4. Set the period of change. In this example we want the change to happen every 3 months.
  5. Choose seed value. In this example we started with $1,000 monthly advertising spend.
  6. Choose seed start date. In this example we want the periodic change to begin at the cutover date of the plan.

Set Driver Rate to Constant of 1

This is a temporary workaround until a new feature removes this step.

Here is the finished example:

We can make sure our driver is functioning as expected in Plan > OpEx

You can see that the amount of $1,000 is increasing 5% every month as we built in the Periodic Driver.