General Alternative Transportation Program Report

[Tracy Ellis]

I have noted inconsistencies in this report.

 

I am trying to track monthly statistics to report to my board.  However, if you manually add the current month's stats to the YTD as of last month, you may get a different total then if you run a report from the beginning of time until the last reported date.

 

Why the inconsistencies?

[Tracy Ellis]

. oh well, it probably has to do with users going back and logging trips or correcting long trips or whatever.

But this is still a problem.  If a "numbers" person happens to compare my reports and asks me why the inconsistencies, what do I say?  And how much veracity can we place on any of our reports if they are always changing?

 

[AnneBruskland]

Hi Tracy, 

This is a great question.  The trip data is subject to change on the General Alternative Transportation Program Report due to number of factors:

Trip data is pulled from users calendars which can be updated for 28 days.  This also impacts, Savings and Non SOV Miles Logged which are calculated based on trip data.  

New Users number can change as well due to registrations bulk uploaded by administrators where the user does not confirm the registration.  They also can change due to a user being deleted from the system, but that is fairly rare.  

Ridematch statistics at the bottom are cumulative system totals for ridematch requests in the system for users from that network at that point in time, which means the numbers will not change for different date ranges.  You can test this out by running the report, and then immediately running the report again for a different date range (say add a couple of months).  The data should only change if someone logged a trip between the time you run the first report and the second, but that's it.  This is because the system does not keep a historical record of ridematch requests that were made and then removed due to the performance impact it would have on the system. 

If you just want to pull the report once, best practice would be to wait until the 28 day cutoff has passed.  I would also recommend including a footnote that User Numbers numbers are current as of the data of pull and subject to slight variences over time and that Ridematch trips are active requests as of the data of pull.   When we use these data points we try to include footnotes along these lines or label report headers and data fields to reflect the data.

It takes a while to learn the nuances of the reports (I am still learning myself).  Please keep the questions coming.

 

Anne